1111 


'•• 

r  .        r 


tur~ 


} 


THE   BEAUTIFUL  MISS  BROOKE 


SOME    PRESS  OPINIONS 

Of  "Z.  Z.'s"  Previous  Work. 


Daily  Chronicle  (London). — In  all  modern  fiction  there  is 
no  novel  which  contains  a  more  able  and  finished 
analysis  of  character.  It  is  a  serious  contribution  to 
literature. 

Echo  (London). — His  work  reveals  a  grand  dramatic  in 
stinct.  There  are  indeed  possibilities  of  fine  work  in 
"  Z.  Z.,"  and  we  may  anticipate  valuable  studies  of  life 
in  the  immediate  future.  Mr.  Louis  Zangwill  should 
cut  a  pretty  figure  in  latter-day  fiction. 

Academy  (London). — A  few  masterful  novelists  like  "  Z.  Z." 
have  it  in  their  power  to  attain  to  a  complete  achieve 
ment 

Daily  Telegraph  (London). — One  of  the  ablest  works  of 
recent  fiction. 

Illustrated  London  News. — One  of  the  cleverest  novels  of 
the  day. 

Graphic  (London). — The  new  novel  by  "Z.  Z."  is  a 
tragedy  of  which  the  power  can  not  possibly  be  de 
nied.  Never  for  one  moment  does  the  author  lose  his 
grip- 

Weekly  Sun  (London). — He  is  one  of  the  forces  to  be 
counted  with  in  contemporary  literature.  Great  quali 
ties  have  gone  to  the  making  of  his  book,  and  with 
these  qualities  Mr.  Louis  Zangwill  is  bound  to  travel 
far. 


Che  Beautiful  miss  Brooke 


By  "Z.  Z." 

Huthor  of  H  Drama  in  Dutch, 
Che  World  and  a  man,  Etc. 


. 


new  Vork 
Hpplcton  and  Company 

1597 


35-4? 


COPYRIGHT,  1897, 
D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


THE  BEAUTIFUL  MISS  BROOKE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  opening  bars  of  a  waltz  sounded 
through  the  house  above  the  irregular  murmur 
of  conversation,  bearing  their  promise  and 
summons  along  festal  corridors  and  into  gar 
landed  nooks  and  alcoves.  Paul  Middleton 
drew  a  breath  of  relief  as  the  girl  to  whom  he 
had  been  talking  was  carried  off  to  dance,  for 
she  had  bored  him  intolerably.  The  refresh 
ment  room,  crowded  a  moment  ago,  was 
thinning  down,  and,  glad  of  the  respite,  he 
took  another  sandwich  and  slowly  sipped  the 
remainder  of  his  coffee.  His  humour  was  of 
the  worst.  If  his  hostess  had  not  been  his 

mother's  oldest  friend,  he  would  never  have 
i 


2  iftlje  Beautiful  ittiss  Brooke. 

allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded  to  accept  her 
invitation  after  he  had  once  decided  to  decline 
it.  Why  had  his  mother  so  persisted,  when 
she  knew  very  well  he  was  looking  forward 
to  playing  in  an  important  chess  match  ? 
Certainly  the  evening  so  far  had  not  compen 
sated  him  for  the  pleasure  he  had  thus  missed. 
He  had  been  chafing  the  whole  time,  and 
intermittently  he  had  played  with  the  idea  of 
slipping  out  and  taking  a  hansom  down  to 
the  4hess  club.  But  he  had  ticked  off  five 
dances  on  Celia's  programme — Celia  was  of 
course  Celia — and  he  was  to  take  her  to  sup 
per.  Moreover,  on  his  arrival  at  the  small- 
and-early,  Mrs.  Saxon  had  led  him  round — he 
feeling  that  his  amiable  expression  made  him 
a  hypocrite — and,  mechanically  repeating  his 
request  for  the  pleasure  of  a  dance,  he  had 
scrawled  his  name  on  several  programmes 
with  scarcely  a  glance  at  their  owners."  It 
was,  however,  more  particularly  his  engage- 


Beautiful  Jttiss  Brooke. 


merits  with  Celia,  and  one  or  two  other  girls 
he  knew  well,  that  had  made  him  stay  on. 
Once  more  he  glanced  at  his  watch.  It  was 
getting  well  on  towards  midnight  now,  and 
the  issue  of  the  chess  match  must  already 
have  been  decided.  After  some  speculation 
as  to  the  winning  side,  he  resigned  himself  to 
finishing  the  evening  where  he  was. 

At  the  best  of  times  Paul  Middleton's  inter 
est  in  the  ballroom  was  only  lukewarm.  He 
frankly  professed  not  to  care  about  it  at  all, 
and,  though  he  was  in  the  habit  of  dancing 
every  dance,  he  looked  upon  himself  more  as 
a  spectator  than  a  participator  on  such  rare 
occasions  as  he  accepted  cards  for.  He  had 
no  favourite  partners.  Into  the  inner  and  in 
timate  life  of  that  circle  of  light  made  for  hu 
man  pleasure  he  could  never  enter;  he  had 
always  shrunk  from  exploring  its  labyrinth  of 
flirtation,  coquetry,  and  petty  manoeuvring, 
the  very  thought  of  the  intricacies  of  which 


4  £be  Beautiful  fttiss  Drookc. 

affrighted  his  plain-sailing  temperament.  To 
him  one  girl  in  a  ballroom  was  much  the 
same  as  another — a  green,  white,  or  pink 
gown  with  sometimes  an  eye-glass  attached. 
He  knew  very  well,  though — if  only  from  his 
mother  having  instilled  it  into  him — that  no 
such  indifference  attached  to  him,  a  young 
man  of  twenty-three,  who  was  absolute  mas 
ter  of  at  least  eleven  thousand  pounds  a  year, 
and  not  without  claim  to  other  merits. 

Becoming  aware  that  the  music  was  in  full 
swing  upstairs,  he  began  to  think  it  was  high 
time  to  look  for  his  partner.  But  the  name 
"Brooke"  on  his  programme,  which  he 
made  out  with  some  difficulty,  called  up  no 
picture,  no  living  personality.  He  could  not 
even  recollect  the  moment  when  he  had  writ 
ten  it,  and  it  did  not  appear  he  had  made  any 
note  to  help  him  identify  the  girl.  His  last 
partner  had  had  to  be  pointed  out  to  him  by 
Mrs.  Saxon,  and  he  did  not  care  to  trouble  her 


beautiful  lUiss  Urookc. 


again.  "Besides,"  he  reflected,  "this  Miss 
Brooke,  whoever  she  is,  will  most  likely  be 
hidden  away  in  some  nook  or  other  and  will 
be  only  too  glad  not  to  be  hunted  up." 

He  had  almost  made  up  his  mind  to  skip 
the  dance  when  there  came  into  the  room  an 
old  schoolfellow,  more  or  less  a  friend  of  his. 
The  two  interchanged  a  word.  Thorn,  it 
appeared,  wanted  a  whisky  and  soda  before 
going  home.  He  had  to  turn  in  early  to  be  in 
good  form  for  the  morrow's  cricket.  It  was 
the  first  match  of  the  season,  and  he  was  anx 
ious  to  do  brilliantly.  Paul  took  the  opportu 
nity  of  asking  him  if,  by  any  chance,  he  knew 
or  had  danced  with  a  Miss  Brooke. 

"The  beautiful  Miss  Brooke  you  mean, 
don't  you?"  asked  Thorn. 

Paul  explained  he  didn't  know  which  Miss 
Brooke  he  meant,  but  that  he  ought  to  be 
dancing  with  a  Miss  Brooke.  Any  girl  who 
answered  to  that  name  would  satisfy  him. 


6  £ljc  Beautiful  ittiss  Crookc. 

"Well,  if  the  one  you  mean,  or  don't 
mean,  is  the  one  I  mean,  she's  just  outside  the 
door  talking  to  a  big  Yankee  chap.  I  never 
heard  of  her  before  to-night,  but  she's  a  stun 
ning  girl.  She's  the  daughter  of  some  Ameri 
can  millionaire,  a  railway  king,  or  something 
of  that  sort — at  least  everybody  says  so.  I 
tried  to  get  a  dance  with  her,  but  I  wasn't 
in  luck.  I  envy  you.  Good-night,  old 
boy ! " 

"I  suppose,  then,  /  must  consider  myself 
in  luck,"  thought  Paul,  staying  yet  a  moment 
as  he  caught  sight  of  his  full  reflection  in  a 
glass.  It  was  a  medium,  slightly  built  figure 
that  met  his  gaze,  easy  and  graceful  of  car 
riage.  The  face  was  fair  with  a  tiny  light 
beard — the  silken  hair  cut  short,  the  features 
intelligent,  the  eyes  grey,  the  teeth  beautiful. 
A  suspicion  of  a  freckle  here  and  there  did  not 
seem  unsuited  ta  the  type  of  complexion. 
The  survey  seemed  to  please  him,  and  he 


£l)c  Beautiful  IttiGG  Brooke.  7 

stepped  forward  with  the  intention  of  taking 
possession  of  "the  beautiful  Miss  Brooke." 

Thorn's  indication  proved  correct.  To  his 
surprise  Miss  Brooke  seemed  to  recognise  him 
as  he  approached,  for  she  welcomed  him  with 
a  smile,  from  which  he  deduced,  moreover, 
that  she  must  have  been  waiting  for  him.  He 
had  a  general  sense  of  enchantment  and  di- 
aphanousness,  of  a  delicate  harmony  of  colour- 
tones  ;  an  impression  as  of  an  idealised  figure 
that  had  stepped  out  of  a  decorative  painting. 
He  wondered  how  he  had  escaped  the  im 
pression  at  the  time  of  his  introduction  to  her, 
and,  despite  her  smile,  he  was  chilled  by  a 
doubt  that  it  might,  after  all,  be  some  other 
Miss  Brooke  on  whose  programme  he  had 
written.  Of  the  man  she  had  been  talking  to 
he  scarcely  took  any  note  at  all,  beyond  veri 
fying  he  was  a  "big  Yankee."  He  took  her 
up  to  the  dancing-room,  and  they  began 
waltzing.  Paul  considered  himself  a  pretty 


8  (The  Beautiful  Miss  Brooke. 

good  dancer,  and  there  were  even  moments 
when  he  could  conscientiously  say  he  was 
enjoying  himself.  But  somehow  he  found 
himself  going  badly  with  Miss  Brooke. 
Things  seemed  to  be  wrong  at  the  very  start. 
There  was  an  uncomfortable  drag.  Paul  was 
compelled  to  take  enormous  steps  to  counter 
act  it,  and  after  a  dozen  turns  both  agreed  to 
give  it  up. 

"You  dance  the  English  step,  of  course, 
Mr.  Middleton,"  she  observed  as  they  saun 
tered  round.  Her  American  accent  was  of  the 
slightest,  and  few  as  were  the  words  she 
had  so  far  spoken,  they  seemed  to  Paul  subtly 
to  vibrate  with  a  pleasant  friendliness.  Her 
voice  was  sweet  and  clear,  with  an  under- 
quality  of  softness  and  caress.  The  sugges 
tion  that  there  were  waltz  steps  other  than 
the  one  he  was  wont  to  dance  was  new  to 
him. 

"I  suppose  mine  is  the  English  step,"  he 


(El)e  Beautiful  iftiss  Srooke.  9 

replied,  "though  I  never  heard  of  any  other. 
Is  yours  very  different  ?  " 

"Oh,  yes.  We  Americans  really  waltz, 
whilst  you  English  just  go  round  and  round 
and  round,  with  your  stiff  legs  for  all  the 
world  like  a  pair  of  compasses." 

Paul  could  not  agree  with  her,  and  patriot 
ically  proceeded  to  defend  the  English  waltz, 
surprised  to  find  himself  expending  oratory  on 
so  trivial  a  subject.  He  asserted  it  was  not 
the  mere  monotonous  turning  to  which  Miss 
Brooke  would  reduce  it,  but  that  a  spirit  went 
with  it ;  whereupon  Miss  Brooke  shook  her 
head,  declaring  she  had  shown  the  American 
step  to  a  good  many  English  people,  and,  no 
matter  how  sceptical  before,  they  had  vowed, 
one  and  all,  never  to  dance  the  English  step 
again. 

They  had  wandered  away  from  the  mass 
of  rotating  figures  and  taken  possession  of  a 
couple  of  seats  in  a  corner  outside  the  dancing- 


io         aije  Seantifnl  Uliss  Srcoke. 

room.  Paul  had  now  an  opportunity  of  ob 
serving  Miss  Brooke  more  narrowly.  Other 
partners  he  had  already  forgotten.  He  could 
hardly  have  identified  them  again.  So  far  as 
he  was  concerned,  they  had  got  completely 
lost  in  the  crowd  from  which  they  had  tem 
porarily  emerged.  But  of  Miss  Brooke  he  felt 
sure  a  perfectly  definite  picture  would  remain 
in  his  mind.  What  struck  him  most  at  once 
was  a  certain  spirit  of  frank  good  humour  that 
seemed  to  exhale  from  her,  that  made  him 
feel,  even  with  her  first  few  words,  as  if  she 
were  merely  resuming  an  interrupted  conver 
sation  with  him.  Her  manner  suggested  the 
natural  falling-into-step  by  the  side  of  an  es 
tablished  friend,  overtaken  en  route,  and  it 
was  hard  for  him  to  realise  this  was  really 
their  first  talk  together. 

Paul  had  never  danced  with  an  American 
girl  before,  else  he  would  have  been  aware 
of  the  incompatibility  of  their  steps.  His  no- 


®l)e  Secmtifal  4!fli0e  Brooke.          n 

tions  of  the  American  girl — or  at  least  the  Amer 
ican  girl  that  comes  to  Europe — were  of  the 
vaguest.  He  had  in  the  course  of  his  exist 
ence  met  perhaps  two  or  three  of  the  class,  but 
he  had  never  really  talked  to  them.  He  had 
heard  the  American  girl  spoken  of— praised, 
damned,  or  tolerated;  he  had  read  about  her 
push  and  businesslike  qualities;  and  a  short 
time  since  he  had  seen  the  type  portrayed  on 
the  stage — a  dashing,  masterful  creature,  a 
piece  of  egotism  incarnate,  with  a  twang  as 
pronounced  as  her  self-assertiveness,  a  terri 
ble  determination,  and  an  equally  terrible 
assurance  of  carrying  it  through.  But  he  had 
never  thought  about  her  coherently;  never 
consciously  crystallized  these  more  or  less 
contradictory  notions  of  her  that  had  come  to 
him  in  so  scattered  and  chaotic  a  fashion.  It 
was  quite  certain,  however,  that  Miss  Brooke 
had  nothing  in  common  with  the  monstrosity 
that  had  given  so  much  delight  to  that  English 


12         ®lje  B«amiful  miss  Brooke. 

audience,  and  raised  in  it  a  due  consciousness 
of  its  own  virtue  of  modest  moderation.  Nor 
could  he  associate  her  with  the  dreadfully  im 
proper  and  unabashable  person  he  had  heard 
more  than  one  British  matron  declare  the 
American  girl  to  be. 

Miss  Brooke  did  not  address  her  words  to 
the  floor,    but  sitting  with   her  chair  at  an 
angle  to  his,  looking  straight   at  him  as  she 
spoke.      Paul  found   the  ordeal  a  fascinating 
but  sufficiently  trying  one.     He  had  no  chance 
against  this  wonderful  girlish   face,   with  its 
sparkling  blue  eyes  and  its  subtle  quality  of 
sincerity  and  spirituality  ;   tantalising  by  the 
charm  of  its  smile,  which  suggested  moments 
of  wickedness  and  kissing,  and  provoking  by 
its  air  of  unawareness  of  its  calm-destroying 
powers.     He  was  conscious,  too,  of  a  long, 
white  neck   rising  above  a  pair  of  well-knit 
shoulders,  out  of  a  mass  of  white  fluffy  trim 
mings,  in  which  were  set  with  careless  art  a 


JUeaotifal  Mies  Brooke.          13 


few  deep-red  velvet  flowers.  On  her  fore 
head  lay  two  roguish  curls  that  moved  freely, 
and  each  temple  was  covered  by  a  bewitching 
lock,  whose  end  curled  inwards  toward  the 
ear.  At  the  back  her  hair  was  drawn  right 
up  into  curls,  leaving  the  whole  neck  free,  and 
showing  the  contour  of  the  gracefully-  poised 
head.  Her  white  gown  seemed  woven  of 
some  fairy  substance,  embroidered  with  myri 
ad  gold  spots,  and  encircled  round  the  waist 
with  three  golden  bands.  The  pink,  round 
flesh  of  the  upper  arm  showed  firm  and  cool 
through  the  web  of  the  sleeve  that  met  the 
long  white  glove  at  the  elbow.  The  bodice 
followed  closely  the  modelling  of  the  bust, 
and  the  skirt  swept  downwards,  ending  in 
a  mass  of  foam-like  fluff  amid  which  nestled 
the  tips  of  two  neat  shoes.  Altogether  a 
superb  girl,  dainty  and  supple,  without  any 
suggestion  of  fragility. 

The  comparative  merits  of  the  English  and 

2 


i4         ®l)£  Seantifal  ifliss  Brooke. 

American  waltzes  were  still  occupying  their 
attention. 

"Now,  tell  me,  Mr.  Middleton,"  she  asked, 
after  enthusiastically  descanting  on  the  pleas 
ure  and  grace  of  the  "  long  glide,"  "  haven't  I 
really  converted  you  ?  " 

"I  want  very  much  to  be  converted,  but 
your  waltz  seems  formidable.  I  am  afraid 
of  it." 

"  I'm  sure  it  would  not  take  you  long  to 
learn.  Cannot  I  really  coax  you  into  a  prom 
ise  to  try  it  ?  I  enjoy  making  converts — I 
have  missionary  tendencies  in  the  blood." 

"That's  interesting.  Because  there  are 
tendencies  in  my  blood,  too.  Anti-mission 
ary  ones,  however.  To  be  true  to  the  family 
tradition,  I'm  not  sure  whether  I  ought  not 
resist  your  coaxings." 

"Which  I'm  sure  you're  not  going  to  do." 
Her  face  took  on  an  expression  of  mock 
imploration.  "But,  tell  me,  how  far  back 


(Elje  Beautiful  ifliss  Sraoke.          15 

does  your  tradition  go,  and  how  did  it 
arise  ?  " 

"It  began  with  my  grandfather,  whose  pet 
idea  was  that  the  energy  and  money  spent  on 
missions  should  be  employed  at  home  for  the 
raising  of  the  lower  classes.  My  father  went 
a  step  further  by  deciding  the  particular  form 
in  which  the  lower  classes  should  reap  the 
benefit,  and  he  died  with  the  hope  that  the 
dream  of  two  generations  should  be  realised 
by  me." 

"There  is  quite  a  touch  of  poetry  in  what 
you  tell  me,"  said  Miss  Brooke.  "  My  family 
history  is  more  prosaic,  but  it  has  a  dash  of 
adventure  in  it.  The  missionary  hobby  began 
with  my  great-grandfather,  who  was  devoted, 
body  and  soul,  to  it — certainly  body,  for  he 
was  eaten  by  cannibals.  Poor  savages  ! " 

"Poor  savages!"  echoed  Paul,  for  the 
moment  supposing  Miss  Brooke  meant  to 
throw  doubts  on  her  ancestor's  digestibility. 


1 6         ®|)e  JJecmtifal  ittiss  Brooke. 

"  Yes,  for  grandfather  went  out  to  preach 
to  them  !  A  very  mean  revenge,  I  call  that." 

"  How  do  you  reconcile  that  statement 
with  your  own  missionary  leanings?"  asked 
Paul,  thinking  it  strange  a  railway  king  should 
be  the  son  of  an  earnest  missionary,  and 
vaguely  speculating  whether  the  millionaire 
was  in  the  habit  of  giving  large  sums  to  ' '  re 
venge"  his  grandfather. 

"  Oh,  as  a  woman  I  have  the  right  to  make 
contradictory  statements.  Tis  a  valuable 
right,  and  I  find  it  very  convenient  not  to 
yield  it  up,  though  I  did  learn  logic  at 
college." 

"  But  surely  it  must  be  ever  so  much  nicer 
to  triumph  by  logic." 

"If  one  were  only  sure  of  triumphing! 
But  I  am  really  in  no  difficulty,  so  you  will 
not  get  an  exhibition  of  logic  to-night.  My 
missionary  tendencies  are  purely  a  matter  of 
instinct,  my  anti-missionary  ones  a  matter  of 


iTlK  Uciuitifnl  -ftlisG  Urookc.  17 

sentiment.  Do  not  instinct  and  sentiment 
pull  different  ways  in  human  beings?  Con 
fess,  Mr.  Middleton,  don't  you  often  want  to 
do  things  you  feel  you  ought  not  ?  " 

"More  often  I  don't  want  to  do  things  I 
feel  I  ought  to. " 

"  That  is  a  piece  of  new  humour." 

"  I  meant  the  inversion  seriously.  But  I'm 
glad  to  find  that  we  are  agreed  at  least  in 
sentiment." 

"And  I  do  try  and  turn  the  instinct  into 
useful  channels.  Americans,  you  know,  never 
let  force  run  to  waste.  Now,  you  -will  learn 
that  waltz,  won't  you,  Mr.  Middleton  ? 
Promise  me  quickly,  as  some  one  is  coming 
to  take  me  to  dance.  There  comes  the  top 
of  his  head." 

"Dear  me,  has  the  next  dance  come  round 
already  !"  ejaculated  Paul.  "You  may  con 
sider  me  a  sincere  convert,"  he  added  quickly, 
"if — if  you  will  spare  me  another  dance." 


1  8          (ftlje  Jteantifal  Ittisc  Srooke. 


"  If  you  can  find  one,''  she  replied  ;  and, 
slipping  her  programme  into  his  hand,  she 
rose  in  response  to  the  smile  of  the  new 
comer.  To  Paul's  surprise,  the  man  was  the 
same  from  whom  he  had  carried  off  Miss 
Brooke  only  a  minute  or  two  ago,  as  it  ap 
peared  to  him.  Which  fact  caused  him  now 
to  take  keen  notice  of  him.  "  The  fellow  " 
was  quite  six  feet  high,  and  of  slim,  supple 
build.  His  face  was  dark,  and,  to  Paul,  dis 
tinctively  American.  He  wore  a  short  pointed 
beard  and  a  carefully-trimmed  moustache. 
His  black  hair  somewhat  eccentrically  hung 
down  in  lines  cut  to  the  same  length.  His 
eyes  gleamed  with  an  almost  unnatural  bright 
ness,  and  his  teeth  showed  themselves  pol 
ished  and  white. 

"Write  thick  over  somebody  else's  name." 
Paul  was  conscious  of  Miss  Brooke  speaking 
to  him  in  almost  a  whisper  ;  then  in  a  mo 
ment  she  had  bowed  and  moved  off.  He 


JJeantifal  itties  Stock*.          19 


could  not  help  feeling  angry  with  the  man 
for  taking  her  away,  and  his  displeasure 
showed  itself  in  his  face.  There  seemed, 
too,  something  proprietorial  in  the  way 
"the  confounded  fellow"  walked  off  with 
her,  and  a  thousand  foolish  conjectures  hustled 
in  his  brain.  However,  he  remembered  he 
had  Miss  Brooke's  programme,  which,  to 
gether  with  her  last  injunction,  formed  a 
comforting  assurance  she  had  taken  him  into 
special  favour.  It  had  been  decidedly  nice  to 
talk  to  this  girl,  who  seemed  just  the  sort  of 
person  —  simple  and  straightforward  despite 
her  wonderful  charm  —  he  felt  he  could  get  on 
with,  and  it  gave  him  pleasure  to  picture  her 
again  sitting  by  his  side,  fresh,  cool,  sweet, 
and  surpassingly  beautiful. 

After  lingering  a  little  he  went  into  the 
ballroom  again.  Miss  Brooke's  figure  alone 
drew  his  eye  —  the  rest  of  the  world  was  a 
mere  dancing  medley.  She  was  obviously 


20         (Elje  tStetmtifal  Uliss  Brooke. 

enjoying  her  dance,  and  Paul  found  himself 
envying  her  partner  his  easy  mastery  of  the 
American  waltz  step.  He  could  not  help  ob 
serving  now  what  a  superb  note  she  struck  in 
that  crowd.  He  could  see,  too,  she  was  be 
ing  noticed,  and  divined  talk  about  her  by 
many  moving  lips. 

He  found  an  opportunity  of  returning  her 
programme,  which  she  received  with  a 
marked  look  of  surprise  that  changed  into 
a  smile  of  thanks.  Paul  was  much  puzzled. 
Her  manner  seemed  to  make  it  appear  that 
she  had  dropped  the  programme  and  he  had 
picked  it  up.  He  rather  resented  this,  till  it 
occurred  to  him  she  had  slipped  it  into  his 
hand  so  as  not  to  be  seen  by  her  present 
cavalier,  and  probably  she  had  played  this 
little  comedy  because  she  did  not  want  to 
rouse  his  suspicion.  Paul's  fears  that  the 
man  might  be  something  to  her  were  re 
awakened,  but  they  were  palliated  by  a 


£lK  L'Ciititiful  iUioo  ttrooke.          21 

sense  of  triumph   over  him.     Had  not  Miss 
Brooke  played  a  part — for  his  sake  ? 

Mrs.  Saxon  passed  near  him  and  stopped 
to  talk  to  him  a  moment.  He  made  absent- 
minded  replies — indeed,  five  minutes  later  he 
recalled  that  he  had  said  something  particu 
larly  foolish  and  hated  himself.  In  this 
mood  he  sought  cousin  Celia  and  took  her 
to  supper.  He  examined  her  more  critically 
now,  finding  her  handsome,  solid,  and  only 
passably  interesting.  He  noted,  too,  that 
her  manner  lacked  sprightliness  and  enthu 
siasm,  and  that  the  things  she  talked  about 
didn't  interest  him  in  the  least.  He  found 
himself  apologising  again  and  again  for  not 
having  heard  what  she  said.  That  was 
whenever  there  were  questions  for  him  to 
answer.  He  had,  however,  enough  wit  left 
to  feel  it  was  fortunate  she  did  not  ask 
questions  more  frequently.  Meanwhile  his 
eye  wandered  constantly  towards  a  little 


22         ®|)e  BeatUifal  .ffliss  Brooke. 

table  some  distance  off,  which  Miss  Brooke 
and  her  American  friend  had  all  to  them 
selves,  the  other  two  covers  being  as  yet 
unappropriated.  Once  or  twice  he  became 
aware  that  Celia's  eye  was  following  his. 
He  saw  a  gleam  of  understanding  flash 
across  her  face,  followed  by  a  flush  whose 
meaning  was  obvious.  But  somehow  he 
felt  reckless. 

An  hour  later  he  was  with  Miss  Brooke 
again.  At  her  laughing  suggestion  they  had 
found  a  hiding-place,  more  "towards  the 
upper  regions,"  in  order  to  keep  out  of  the 
way  of  the  man  whose  name  had  been  writ 
ten  over,  and  who,  indeed,  never  appeared. 
Miss  Brooke  was  admiring  an  exquisite  little 
painting  of  a  picturesque  boy  looking  over  a 
rude  wooden  bridge  on  to  a  small  stream. 
The  work,  which  hung  just  opposite  them, 
bore  a  well-known  French  signature,  and  had 
attracted  her  attention  at  once.  The  enthusi- 


®!)e  Beautiful  ittiss  Srooke.          23 

asm  with  which  she  spoke  of  the  artist  led 
Paul  to  inquire  if  she  herself  painted. 

"I  try  to,"  she  answered  self-depreca- 
tingly.  "I  am  appallingly  interested  in  my 
work.  I  always  lose  myself  when  talking 
about  it." 

She  was  evidently  serious,  and  Paul  was 
glad  to  have  struck  such  a  mood,  which 
promised  possibilities  of  intimate  conversa 
tion. 

"You  have  taken  up  art  seriously?"  he 
asked. 

"  One  must  do  something  to  fill  one's 
life,"  she  replied,  with  unmistakable  earnest 
ness  ;  and  set  Paul  musing  about  the  inability 
of  fortune  to  compensate  for  a  want  of  pur 
pose  in  life,  as  he  had,  indeed,  felt  long  ago. 
That  a  woman,  however,  should  give  expres 
sion  to  the  sentiment  surprised  him.  Her 
next  words  astonished  him  still  more. 

"I    have   always   been    ambitious,  and   I 


24         ®I)e  SeatHiful  fttiss  Brooke. 

might  have  achieved  something  in  art  if  I 
hadn't  wasted  so  many  years  trying  other 
things." 

"But,  surely  you  must  find  the  knowl 
edge  you  have  acquired  worth  having." 

"I  would  willingly  exchange  it  all  for  two 
years'  progress  in  my  work.  The  mistakes 
began  by  poppa  discovering  I  was  a  musical 
genius,  and  as  I  was  just  mad  to  do  some 
thing  big  in  the  world,  I  believed  him.  The 
next  discovery  was  mine — that  I  was  a  great 
writer,  and  when,  two  years  after  that,  an  art 
ist  friend  declared  some  sketches  of  mine 
were  full  of  inspiration,  my  enthusiasm  for 
writing  fizzed  out  immediately,  and  I  rushed 
into  painting,  and  over  to  Paris  to  study.  Of 
course,  I'm  only  in  the  student  stage,  but  my 
professor  has  given  me  distinct  encourage 
ment.  In  my  heart  I  really  believe  I  should 

succeed  if  only "  She  broke  off  with  a 

curious  laugh,  but  went  on  almost  immedi- 


£ljc  Ucnntifttl  lilies  Brooke.          25 

ately:  "If  only  I  don't  transfer  my  enthusi 
asm  to  sculpture  before  long.  You  see  I 
know  my  little  ways.  Besides,  the  tempta 
tion  to  change  is  as  strong  as  it  possibly  can 
be.  It  would  be  such  a  distinction  to  have 
completed  the  round  of  the  arts." 

"  Poetry  would  still  be  left  untouched." 
"Oh,  I've  written  poetry  as  well.     That 
was    part    and    parcel    of   my    literary    ma 
nia." 

"  And  naturally  expired  with  it." 
"No.  Let  me  confess.  Poetry  is  the  one 
thing  I  keep  up  in  order  to  be  able  to  feel  I  am 
made  of  fine  stuff.  It's  the  one  unsaleable 
thing  I  devote  my  time  to,  and  without  it  I 
should  feel  utterly  ignoble.  With  all  my  am 
bition  to  achieve  greatness,  I  am  quite  unable 
to  say  how  much  of  my  enthusiasm  is  due  to 
the  hope  of  accompanying  dollars." 

Paul    was    startled    for  a  moment,    then 
laughed  in  high  amusement  at  the  idea  of  a 


26         ®l)e  Seaotifol  ittiss  Brooke. 

railway  king's  daughter  eking  out  her  income 
by  Art. 

"I  mean  it.  I'm  not  as  noble  as  I  look, 
but  thank  you  for  the  compliment  all  the 
same.  If  I  have  allowed  myself  any  illusions 
on  the  point,  they  were  all  dissipated  when  I 
heard  of  the  price  a  Salon  picture  sold  for 
last  year.  My  feeling  of  envy  was  too  naked 
to  be  mistaken — naked  and  unashamed.  I 
don't  know  if  you've  ever  experienced  the  sort 
of  thing — whether  you've  ever  written  poetry 
to  keep  your  self-respect." 

"  I  fear  writing  poetry  would  be  no  test  for 
me.  I  don't  mean  to  imply  that  the  result 
would  not  be  unsaleable,"  he  added,  smiling, 
"but  that  I  am  not  so  avaricious  as  you  pro 
fess  to  be.  I  am  quite  satisfied  that  my  work 

« 
in  life  shall  bring  me  no  return." 

"I  wish  I  were  as  fine  as  that,"  said  Miss 
Brooke. 

"I  am  afraid  I  am  far  from  being  fine," 


Beautiful  ifliss  Brooke.          27 


said  Paul,  modestly.  "  I  am  simply  content 
with  my  fortune.  As  you  said  before,  one 
must  do  something  to  fill  one's  life.  I  am 
only  too  grateful  for  the  prospect  of  being  able 
to  employ  my  energies.  So  you  see  I  am 
really  selfish  at  bottom." 

"We  each  appear  to  have  a  due  sense  of 
the  clay  in  us,  so  let  us  agree  we  are  neither 
of  us  precisely  the  saints  we  appear.  But 
you've  not  yet  told  me  in  what  particular  way 
you  purpose  satisfying  that  selfishness  of 
yours." 

"Thereby  hangs  a  long  tale,"  said  Paul, 
laughing  again.  "It  is  connected  with  the 
family  tradition  I  mentioned  to  you  before." 

"I  remember.  Your  father  laid  some  in 
junction  on  you  about  converting  missionary 
energies  and  subscriptions  for  home  use." 

"That  is  a  quaint  way  of  putting  it.  It  is 
true  his  injunction  first  set  me  thinking,  and  it 
led  to  my  developing  certain  Utopian  ideas  of 


28         ®|)e  Seontifal  ittiss  Brooke. 

my  own.  As  the  result,  I  am  now  studying 
architecture.  No  doubt  you  will  think  it  a 
strange  choice.  There  begins  another  dance, 
and  we've  both  partners." 

"How  vexatious!"  said  Miss  Brooke. 
"Just  when  I  am  so  interested.  I  am  really 
longing  to  hear  all  about  your  Utopia." 

"I  should  so  much  have  liked  to  tell  you," 
murmured  Paul,  thinking  he  might  even  have 
sat  out  another  dance  if  it  were  not  for  his 
foolish  exclamation. 

"Oh,  but  you're  going  to  call,  Mr.  Mid- 
dleton." 

"  I  shall  be  very  happy,"  said  Paul,  repres 
sing  a  start. 

She  wrote  her  address  for  him  on  the  back 
of  his  programme,  adding,  "I  shall  be  in  on 
Wednesday  afternoon." 

He  thanked  her  and  took  her  down  to  the 
dancing-room  where  she  was  pounced  upon 
immediately,  and  he  then-  discovered,  to  his 


ffcantifnl  itties  Brooke.          29 


surprise,  that  he  and  Miss  Brooke  had  sat  out 
two  dances!  Moreover,  the  frown  which 
Celia  gave  him  over  her  partner's  shoulder  as 
she  waltzed  by  made  him  refer  to  his  pro 
gramme,  when  he  found  he  had  overlooked 
the  little  tick  at  the  side  of  dance  number  four 
teen. 


CHAPTER  II. 

"A  DAY  and  a  half  to  wait  before  seeing 
Miss  Brooke  again,"  was  Paul's  first  reflection 
the  next  morning.  "All  I  should  have 
laughed  at  as  absurd  a  month  ago,  proves  to 
be  true.  I  am  fast  in  the  toils."  And  all 
through  the  day  Miss  Brooke  filled  his 
thoughts.  He  was,  somehow,  a  different 
person  from  before,  as  if  he  had  awakened 
from  some  sluggish  torpor. 

All  his  life  Paul  had  suffered  from  an  ex 
cess  of  parental  love,  which  had  considerably 
curtailed  his  freedom;  and  even  when  the 
death  of  his  father  a  year  before  had  left  him 
his  own  master,  he  had  no  thought  of  living 
away  from  his  mother,  much  to  her  secret 

30 


£l]f  Deantifnl  Bliss  Orooke.          31 

gratification.  Her  fondness  for  him  had  been 
such  that  she  had  had  him  educated  at  home 
for  several  years,  and  was  only  persuaded  to 
let  him  go  to  school  under  great  pressure  from 
her  husband.  She  had  established  her  influ 
ence  over  her  boy  from  the  beginning,  and  his 
pliable  and  obedient  disposition  had  enabled 
her  to  maintain  it  now  that  he  was  grown  up. 
His  father,  who  had  divided  his  time  between 
collecting  beautiful  beetles,  representing  a 
rural  constituency,  enacting  the  good  Samari 
tan,  and,  as  Paul  had  told  Miss  Brooke,  thun 
dering  and  writing  letters  to  the  press  against 
foreign  missions,  had  cherished  an  ambitious 
career  for  his  son.  He  himself,  he  felt,  was  a 
mere  pawn  on  the  parliamentary  chessboard, 
and  he  dreamt  of  a  really  great  political  future 
for  Paul,  who,  moreover,  he  hoped,  would 
leave  his  mark  on  the  social  life  of  the  genera 
tion  by  promoting  the  increase  of  public  fine- 
art  collections.  Beautiful  centres  of  art — beau- 


32         ®l)e  Beautiful  JHis0  Brooke. 

tiful  buildings  with  beautiful  contents — could 
be  established,  he  argued,  if  the  money  sub 
scribed  for  foreign  missions  could  be  used  for 
the  purpose;  and  he  had  the  necessary  statis 
tics  ready  to  hurl  at  the  head  of  the  sceptic. 

Acting  on  the  advice  of  a  friend  who  con 
sidered  the  Bar  afforded  the  best  training  in 
oratory,  he  began  by  placing  the  boy  in  a  so 
licitor's  office  immediately  after  he  had  left 
college.  Some  eighteen  months  later  the 
father  was  carried  off  in  an  epidemic  of  influ 
enza.  Paul,  who  had  long  since  discovered 
that  oratory  md  the  law  was  not  adapted  to 
one  of  his  temperament,  had  decision  enough 
to  desist  from  it.  His  attitude  towards  his 
sire's  dream  had  never  been  a  very  reverent 
one,  for  he  knew  well  he  was  not  of  the  stuff 
of  which  Parliamentary  leaders  are  made. 
But,  as  the  affection  between  the  two  had  been 
really  strong,  the  son  wished  to  respect  the 
father's  ideas  so  far  as  possible,  if  only  for  sen- 


®lje  Beotitifal  iJliss  Srooke.          33 

timental  reasons;  and,  finding  in  himself  a 
natural  taste  for  making  beautiful  designs  as 
well  as  an  innocent  love  for  illuminated 
books,  old  carvings  and  mouldings,  and  such 
curious  antiques  as  had  a  real  art  value,  it  oc 
curred  to  him  he  might  make  a  thorough 
study  of  architecture  from  the  art  as  well  as 
the  practical  side.  Later  on  he  would  design 
art  galleries  for  the  people,  and  set  a  move 
ment  on  foot  to  promote  their  construction. 
Without  taking  himself  too  solemnly,  he  liked 
to  think  that  what  he  purposed  would  have 
given  his  father  pleasure ;  and  he  was  always 
able  to  take  good-humouredly  such  jesting  re 
marks  as  had  reference  to  his  schemes. 

Meanwhile  mother  and  son  had  settled 
down  in  a  small  house  in  Elm  Park  Road. 
The  country  house  was  let  on  a  long  lease, 
as  Mrs.  Middleton  did  not  wish  to  have  the 
trouble  of  keeping  it  up,  preferring  to  travel 
for  three  months  in  the  year.  The  household 


34          £lK  Beautiful  'Hiss  Brooke. 

consumed  but  a  small  part  of  their  revenues, 
and  consequently  the  amount  of  money  in 
the  family  threatened  to  increase  from  year 
to  year,  despite  that  Mr.  Middleton's  good 
works  were  continued,  and  that  Paul,  going 
a-slumming,  started  additional  good  works  on 
his  own  account. 

Mrs.  Middleton  was  only  too  pleased  at 
Paul's  leaving  "that  nasty  dark,  close  office," 
asserting  it  must  have  injured  his  health.  Be 
sides,  her  faith  in  his  talents  was  so  absolute 
that  she  was  certain  he  would  one  day  be  a 
very  great  man  indeed,  whatever  the  profes 
sion  he  espoused.  So  she  ceded  to  him  for 
his  study  perhaps  the  pleasantest  room  in  the 
house.  It  was  at  the  back  and  opened  on  to 
a  narrow  garden,  so  that  he  could  saunter  out 
occasionally  and  pace  up  and  down.  As  he 
was  here  quite  isolated,  he  never  felt  the  need 
of  having  rooms  elsewhere. 

Despite  the  vigilance   under  which    Paul 


®l)c  Beautiful  4Jti00  Srooke.         35 

had  grown  up,  he  had  yet  managed  to  have 
one  or  two  boyish  love-affairs  without  his 
parents  suspecting  anything  ;  and  he  had  at 
times  dreamt  of  an  ideal  love  and  an  ideal 
happiness.  But  of  late  he  had  developed  dif 
ferent  notions,  and  had  come  to  pride  himself 
on  his  freedom  from  all  mawkish  sentiment. 
Notwithstanding  this,  he  was  chivalrous 
enough  to  believe  that  women  were  angels  ; 
which  belief,  curiously  enough,  was  unim 
paired  by  the  fact  that,  in  practice,  he  was 
a  little  bit  afraid  and  suspicious  of  them. 
Nor  did  he  always  find  them  interesting  ; 
he  would  sooner  play  a  game  of  chess  any 
day  than  talk  to  one  of  them. 

Cousin  Celia  was  often  at  the  house  to  join 
him  and  his  mother  at  their  quiet  tea,  and  one 
day  the  idea  entered  his  head  that  Mrs.  Mid- 
dleton  had  a  certain  pet  scheme.  But  mod 
esty  prevented  it  from  taking  root  in  him,  and 
he  preferred  to  believe  that  the  notion  of  a 


36         &|)e  Beautiful  ittisa  !3r0oke. 

marriage  between  him  and  Celia  had  oc 
curred  only  to  himself,  and  would  greatly 
surprise  everybody  else  if  he  broached  it. 
Celia  was  an  orphan,  and  he  had  heard 
her  pitied  all  his  life.  She  was  considered 
to  possess  an  extraordinary  share  of  good 
looks  and  an  uncommon  degree  of  affability. 
Good  judges  assured  one  another  she  would 
make  an  excellent  wife,  and  Mrs.  Middleton 
had  taken  good  care  that  the  said  judges 
should  discuss  the  girl  in  the  presence  of 
her  boy,  who  could  scarcely  contend  against 
so  subtle  an  undermining.  Despite  his  vague 
knowledge  of  the  wiles  of  match-making,  he 
began  to  persuade  himself  that  he  really  liked 
Celia,  and  he  played  more  and  more  with  the 
idea  of  marrying  her.  The  leading-strings 
were  handled  so  lightly  and  skilfully,  he 
would  have  been  much  astonished  to  hear 
that  his  inclinations  were  not  absolutely 
uninfluenced.  In  Celia  was  all  that  straight- 


J3eamifal  ittiss  JJrook*.         37 


forwardness  by  which  he  set  such  store  ; 
from  her  was  absent  all  that  caprice  and 
flirtatiousness  he  was  so  afraid  of.  It  was 
easy  to  know  her  wishes,  easy  to  please 
her  ;  and  she  had  never  made  him  the 
victim  of  moods. 

And  the  more  he  thought  of  marrying  her, 
the  more  he  began  to  decry  romantic  love  to 
himself.  Whether  it  really  existed  or  not  he 
would  not  pretend  to  say,  though,  in  the  light 
of  his  own  experience,  he  could  just  imagine 
its  existence.  Those  old  boyish  ideas  of  his 
were  all  a  mistake.  And  thereupon  he  fell 
back  eagerly  on  the  theory  of  sensible  com 
panionship  as  the  only  sound  basis  for 
marriage  —  which  theory  had  now  abruptly 
to  be  rejected. 

Already  Paul,  promenading  his  garden 
whilst  beautiful  coloured  plates  of  Egyptian 
decoration  lay  neglected  on  his  table,  was 
bothering  himself  as  to  whether  he  could 


38         ®l)£  Jteomifai  Miss  Srooke. 

leave  Celia  out  of  the  account  with  a  clear 
conscience.  The  question  he  kept  asking 
himself  was  whether  such  attention  as  he 
had  paid  her  could  reasonably  be  inter 
preted  as  bearing  any  real  significance.  He 
was  certain  he  had  never  actively  made 
love  to  her,  as  he  had  always  hesitated  to 
begin,  but  he  had  seen  a  great  deal  of  her 
of  late  and  their  intimacy  had  made  great 
strides.  Moreover,  she  had  allowed  him  his 
five  dances  the  evening  before  without  a 
word  of  demur.  He  knew,  too,  he  had 
often  felt  himself  flushing  on  hearing  her 
praised,  feeling  a  sort  of  proprietary  pride 
in  the  subject  of  discussion  ;  and  he  won 
dered  now  if  his  demeanour  on  such  oc 
casions  had  been  observed. 

All  these  considerations  caused  him  con 
siderable  uneasiness  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  he  was  perfectly  sure  now  he  did  not 
want  to  marry  her.  Miss  Brooke  had  come 


Scantifni  .fttise  Crooke.          39 


into  his  horizon,  and  lo  !  the  whole  world 
was  changed.  Oh,  to  be  free  to  woo  and 
win  such  a  girl  ! 

Suddenly  he  had  a  flash  of  shrewder  in 
sight,  and  he  was  able  to  find  comfort  in 
that  first  suspicion,  which  now  returned  to 
him,  that  his  mother  was  really  responsible 
for  this  Celia  affair.  Why  —  and  his  awakened 
mind  now  ran  over  a  score  of  memories  —  he 
had  scarcely  ever  met  Celia  out  without  his 
mother  having  supplied  the  impulse  for  his 
going  to  the  particular  place  !  He  had  been 
a  fool  not  to  see  how  she  had  worked 
matters  from  the  beginning.  And  now 
there  arose  in  him  a  shade  of  resentment 
against  her,  and  his  man's  independence 
revolted  for  the  first  time  against  this  subtle 
subordination  of  his  will  to  hers.  He  had 
a  definite  perception  —  attended  with  a  dis 
tinct  sense  of  shame  —  of  the  fact  that  he 
had  never  really  ceased  to  be,  so  far  as 


40         Stye  Beautiful  Jfli0s  Brooke. 


she  was  concerned,  the  good  little  boy  who 
had  learnt  his  letters  at  her  knee.  He  had 
an  individuality  of  his  own,  he  told  himself, 
and  it  behoved  him  to  play  the  part  of  a 
man.  He  should  begin  his  emancipation 
at  once  by  putting  a  prompt  stop  to  "this 
Celia  business.'' 


CHAPTER  III. 

As  Paul  rang  at  the  address  Miss  Brooke 
had  scribbled  down  on  his  programme,  his 
dominating  thought  was  that  American 
millionaire's  daughters  chose  rather  shabby 
houses  to  stay  in.  Though  the  name  of 
the  street  had  surprised  him  when  he  had 
first  read  it,  he  had  yet  conceived  it  possible 
she  might  be  staying  at  some  kind  of  private 
hotel  ;  but  he  had  not  anticipated  a  dusty 
card  with  the  word  "apartments."  He  took 
it  for  granted  her  mother  was  with  her,  and, 
though  he  had  not  formed  any  clear  concep 
tion  of  Mrs.  Brooke,  she  looming  mistily  in 
his  mind  as  a  handsome,  stately  personage 
that  had  decidedly  to  be  taken  into  the 

41 


42          £l)e  beautiful  Miss  JBrooke. 

reckoning,  he  had  wondered  how  she  would 
receive  him. 

A  maid-servant  ushered  him  up  two  flights 
of  stairs  into  a  front  room  and  announced  his 
name.  As  he  entered  he  was  conscious  of 
three  persons  sitting  at  the  far  end  where  a 
bright  fire  burned,  and  was  somewhat  startled 
to  recognise  the  long  lithe  figure,  the  dark 
face  and  hair,  and  the  piercing  black  eyes 
of  the  American  Miss  Brooke  had  danced 
with.  A  peculiar  shade  of  expression  flitted 
across  the  man's  face,  telling  Paul  the  recog 
nition  was  mutual.  At  the  same  time  Paul 
was  assuming  that  the  bonneted  and  cloaked 
mature-looking  lady  was  no  other  than  Mrs. 
Brooke  herself,  and  he  wondered  why  she 
should  receive  callers  when  so  obviously 
dressed  for  going  out.  Miss  Brooke  rose  to 
greet  him  with  a  pleasant  smile  of  wel 
come.  In  a  simple  dress  with  wide  sleeves 
that  fitted  tight  round  the  wrists,  her  short 


(Ehe  Ceantifal  ittiso  Srooke.          43 

front  hair,  evenly  divided,  falling  over  her 
temples  in  rippling  masses,  she  seemed  less 
phantasmal  and  fairylike,  less  remote  from 
this  world — a  being  more  humanly  sweet 
and  that  one  might  dare  to  woo. 

But  unfortunately  in  that  moment  he  be 
came  aware  of  the  huge  bulk  of  a  high 
bed  against  the  wall  on  his  right,  and  a 
tall  screen  that  cut  off  a  corner  of  the 
room  struck  him  as  having  the  air  of  con 
cealing  something.  Though  he  kept  con 
trol  over  himself  physically,  his  mind  grew 
perfectly  vacant.  He  did  not  dare  to  think 
— it  seemed  vain  to  make  any  surmise — 
but  bowed  to  the  bonneted  lady  as  he 
heard  Miss  Brooke  say  :  "  Katharine,  let 
me  introduce  my  friend,  Mr.  Middleton — 
Mrs.  Potter." 

Paul  had  seldom  felt  so  many  emotions 
at  one  time.  Added  to  his  surprise  at  the 
expected  Mrs.  Brooke  changing  at  the  last 


44         ®l)e  Bsontifal  Mi00  Srooke. 


moment  into  a  Mrs.  Potter,  and  to  his 
bewilderment  at  being  received  in  a  bed 
room,  was  a  thrill  of  pleasure  at  Miss 
Brooke's  reference  to  him  as  "my  friend." 
He  had,  too,  a  sense  of  gratified  curiosity 
at  learning  the  next  moment  that  the  man's 
name  was  Pemberton  ;  it  was  convenient, 
moreover,  to  have  a  definite  symbol  by 
which  to  refer  to  him  in  thought. 

"I  think  the  water's  boiling,  dear,"  said 
Mrs.  Potter.  "Doesn't  it  mean  'boiling' 
when  steam  comes  out  of  the  spout  like 
that  ?  " 

"Not  yet,  Katharine.  Haifa  minute  more. 
You  are  just  in  nice  time,  Mr.  Middleton,  to 
get  your  cup  of  tea  at  its  best."  And  Miss 
Brooke  busied  herself  cutting  up  a  big  lemon 
into  thin  slices  at  a  little  table  that  was  laid 
with  a  pretty  Japanese  tea-set. 

"Lisa's  tea  is  quite  wonderful,"  chimed  in 
Mrs.  Potter.  "  I  always  spoil  mine  —  I  can 


®l)e  Beautiful  iHiss  Brooke.          45 

never  quite  tell  when  the  water  boils.  That's 
my  pet  stupidity." 

For  a  moment  Paul  watched  the  artistic 
copper  kettle  as  it  sang  its  pleasant  song. 
Mrs.  Potter  already  struck  him  as  an  obviously 
cheerful  personality,  and  he  felt  absurdly  grate 
ful  to  her  for  mentioning  Miss  Brooke's  first 
name.  He  had  not  yet  given  up  Mrs.  Brooke, 
expecting  her  to  enter  the  room  very  soon 
now ;  and  he  found  it  hard  not  to  fix  his  gaze 
noticeably  on  the  bed,  half-surprised  that 
everybody  else  ignored  it,  seeming  totally  un 
conscious  that  any  such  piece  of  furniture  was 
there  at  all. 

Mr.  Pemberton  took  little  part  in  the  some 
what  banal  but  good-humoured  conversation 
that  now  sprang  up,  but  drummed  idly  with 
his  fingers  on  the  settee  on  which  he  was 
lounging.  Now  and  again  a  monosyllabic 
drawl  fell  languidly  from  him,  and  Paul  read 
into  this  demeanour  annoyance  at  his  presence. 

4 


46          £|)c  Ucnntifnl  IlUss  Brooke. 

Mrs.  Potter,  he  soon  learnt — for  the  lady 
was  loquacious — was  a  widow  and  a  journal 
ist  on  a  three  months'  stay  in  Europe,  of 
which  she  was  passing  a  month  in  London, 
endeavouring  to  make  as  much  copy  out  of  it 
as  possible.  She  related  with  glee,  and  with 
out  any  apparent  qualms  of  conscience,  how 
she  had  "fixed  up  "  accounts  of  various  great 
society  functions,  writing  her  copy  in  the  first 
person. 

"  Lisa  is  so  good  and  helpful  to  me.  I  im 
pose  on  her  dreadfully.  I  should  never  have 
been  able  to  get  them  fixed  up  without  her. 
And  then  her  spelling  is  so  perfect — she  runs 
over  my  copy  and  puts  it  right  in  a  jiffy." 

"  Lemon  or  cream,  Mr.  Middleton, 
please ?"  asked  Miss  Brooke.  "Two  lumps 
of  sugar  or  one?  What,  none  at  all!  Oh, 
yes,  everybody  thinks  these  cups  sweetly 
pretty.  I'm  taking  them  home  with  me  as  a 
souvenir." 


®l)e  Beantifnl  .fttiss  Brooke.          47 

"What  shall  I  do  without  you  in  Paris?" 
broke  in  Mrs.  Potter  again.  "I  shall  be  lost 
there.  Can't  I  coax  you  to  come  back  with 
me,  Lisa  dear?" 

"Can't  disappoint  poppa,"  said  Miss 
Brooke  laconically. 

"You'll  have  me  to  come  to,"  drawled 
Mr.  Pemberton. 

"You'll  be  handy  for  some  things,  but 
your  spelling's  worse  than  mine,"  said  Mrs. 
Potter;  and  somewhat  irrelevantly  went  on  to 
suppose  that  Paul  must  know  Paris  well. 

Paul,  alas !  had  only  two  visits  to  boast  of, 
one  of  a  week's,  the  other  of  two  weeks'  du 
ration,  both  in  the  company  of  his  mother. 
Whereupon  a  sound,  as  of  a  suppressed  snig 
ger,  came  from  the  direction  of  Pemberton. 

Something  like  the  truth  had  begun  to 
dawn  on  Paul's  mind,  and  he  knew  better 
now  than  to  continue  to  expect  Mrs.  Brooke 
to  appear.  He  had  sufficiently  gathered  from 


48          Jin:  Ucamiful  IftiGG  Brooke. 

the  conversation  that  Miss  Brooke  was  on  her 
way  home  from  Paris  to  America,  and  that 
she  was  going  to  travel  alone,  and  had  taken 
London  en  route,  probably  armed  with  letters 
of  introduction.  Most  likely,  he  argued,  she 
must  have  considered  the  one  room  sufficient 
for  her  needs,  and  had  not  anticipated  callers. 
Or  perhaps  Americans,  for  all  he  knew,  did 
not  mind  receiving  callers  in  a  bedroom. 
This,  he  concluded,  was  probably  the  case,  as 
no  one  seemed  in  the  least  gene",  despite  that 
the  bed  was  such  a  palpable  fact,  and  stood 
there  in  massive  unblushingness.  Otherwise 
an  atmosphere  of  feminine  daintiness  seemed 
to  surround  Miss  Brooke,  transforming  even 
this  lodging-house  bedroom. 

However,  he  did  not  grasp  the  facts  with 
out  an  almost  overwhelming  sense  of  pain. 

His  romance  had  been  rudely  shattered  at 
one  blast,  and  he  felt  his  breath  draw  heavily 
when  he  first  comprehended  Miss  Brooke  was 


£l)c  Ccautifnl  itties  Brooke.          49 

on  the  point  of  leaving  London.  A  sense  of 
helplessness  came  upon  him  as  he  realised  he 
could  do  nothing  but  just  get  through  with 
his  call.  There  seemed  not  the  slightest 
chance  now  of  his  telling  her  about  the  career 
he  purposed  for  himself.  He  had  dreamed, 
too,  of  her  showing  him  her  verses,  perhaps 
some  of  her  sketches.  But  the  presence  of  the 
others  stood  in  the  way.  He  would  have 
liked  to  hate  them  both,  but  being  forced  to 
like  Mrs.  Potter,  he  had  to  bestow  a  double 
amount  of  dislike  on  Mr.  Pemberton,  which 
he  was  very  glad  to  do.  And  then  he  wanted 
to  know  the  exact  relation  between  Mr.  Pem 
berton  and  Miss  Brooke.  From  a  hint  the 
"fellow"  had  dropped,  it  was  clear  he  lived 
in  Paris — where  Miss  Brooke  had  been  living. 
Was  he  a  relative  ?  Who  was  he  ?  Why 
was  he  in  London  ?  How  came  he  to  be  at 
Mrs.  Saxon's  dance  ?  For  a  moment  Paul 
thought  of  asking  Mrs.  Saxon  about  him,  and 


50          ®l)e  Beautiful  ittiss  Srooke. 

also  about  Miss  Brooke,  but  he  put  the  idea 
from  him  as  underhand  and  unworthy. 

Meanwhile  the  conversation  went  on, 
pleasant  and  banal.  Mrs.  Potter  deluged  Paul 
with  questions  about  the  London  season  and 
English  painters  and  the  Academy.  She  nar 
rated  the  comicalities  of  her  shopping  expedi 
tions,  various  little  misadventures  that  had 
arisen  from  the  different  usage  of  everyday 
words  by  the  two  nations.  By  imperceptible 
stages  along  a  tortuous  and  varied  route  they 
drifted  on  to  the  subject  of  love,  and  Mrs. 
Potter,  still  keeping  the  talk  almost  all  to  her 
self,  related  several  touching  romances  of  her 
friends'  lives.  Once  or  twice  Paul's  gloom 
was  lightened  by  the  smile  of  Miss  Brooke 
that  met  his  look  each  time  he  turned  his  face 
towards  her.  A  lien,  invisible  to  the  others, 
seemed  to  be  established  between  them. 

At  length  Mrs.  Potter,  drawing  Mr.  Pem- 
berton's  attention  to  the  hour,  rose  to  go,  and 


Beautiful  ifliss  Brooke.          5  1 


the  two  left  together.  Despite  some  mad 
idea  of  declaring  himself  to  Miss  Brooke  there 
and  then,  which  had  occurred  to  him,  Paul 
had  also  risen,  but  to  his  astonishment  Miss 
Brooke  drew  her  chair  closer  to  the  fire,  and 
motioned  him  to  take  a  seat  in  the  opposite 
chimney  corner.  He  obeyed  as  if  hypnotised. 
"What  would  my  mother  think  of  this?" 
he  asked  himself,  and  awaited  developments. 
As  for  Miss  Brooke,  at  no  moment  did  she 
seem  aware  of  the  slightest  unconventionality 
in  the  situation. 

"Katharine  is  so  sweet,"  she  began 
thoughtfully.  "You  can't  imagine  how 
pleased  I  was  when  she  wrote  she  was 
coming.  Charlie  is  piloting  her  about  a  lit 
tle.  He  is  so  good-natured." 

"Charlie  is,  I  presume,  Mr.  Pemberton." 
"Why,    of  course.     And   he'll  be  of  so 
much  use  to  her  in  Paris.     He  has  a  studio 
there.      But    I  hope  she  won't  fall   in  love 


52         (tlje  Beautiful  fttiss  Brooke. 

with  him,"  she  added  laughingly.  "Katha 
rine  is  so  romantic;  she  is  always  in  love 
with  some  man  or  other." 

Though  he  knew  as  a  general  biological 
fact  that  women  fall  in  love  with  men,  Paul, 
despite  all  the  love-stories  he  had  read,  had 
never  yet  been  able  to  grasp  it  and  admit  it 
to  himself  as  a  fact  of  actual  life.  Somehow, 
he  had  always  felt  that  the  onus  of  falling  in 
love  and  of  courtship  rested  on  men,  and  that 
it  was  very  good  and  condescending  of  women 
to  allow  themselves  to  be  loved  at  all.  But 
Miss  Brooke's  way  of  talking  seemed  to  take 
it  for  granted  that  it  was  a  perfectly  natural 
and  proper  thing  for  a  woman  to  be  in  love, 
that  romance  was  a  thing  a  woman  might 
own  to  without  any  shame;  making  him 
realise  more  distinctly  than  ever  before  that 
women  were  not  so  entirely  passive  and 
passionless.  But  all  this  he  rather  felt  than 
thought,  and  it  did  not  interfere  with  the 


£l]c  Ucuntiful  JUios  Brooke.          53 

sentence  that  was  on  the  tip  of  his  tongue; 
the  outcome  of  his  sense  of  disappointment 
and  desolation  at  her  threatened  departure 
out  of  his  life,  which  was  only  mitigated  by 
the  reflection  that  Pemberton  was  being  left 
behind. 

"And  now  you  are  going  home!" 

The  words  were  obviously  equivalent  to 
a  sigh  of  regret. 

"But  not  for  good,  I  hope,"  said  Miss 
Brooke;  and  Paul's  universe  changed  at  once 
into  a  wonderful  enchanted  garden.  "Of 
course,  it  will  be  very  nice  to  be  at  home 
with  poppa  and  mamma  again,  but  I  should 
not  be  leaving  Paris  from  choice.  I  was  mak 
ing  such  progress  at  school  that  my  professor 
was  quite  angry  I  couldn't  stay.  But  per 
haps  I  shall  be  back  in  a  year's  time.  I  cer 
tainly  shall  if  everything  goes  well." 

"I  do  hope  it's  nothing  serious  that  calls 
you  away,  and  that  keeps  you  from  your 


54         ffil)*  Seontifal  ittiss  Srooke. 

studies  so  long  a  time,"  exclaimed  Paul  fer 
vently. 

' '  From  my  point  of  view  it's  certainly 
serious,"  smiled  Miss  Brooke,  good-humour- 
edly.  "As  I've  already  tried  to  make  you 
believe,  I  am  a  very  greedy  person,  with  a 
fondness  for  dollars,  and  the  whole  trouble 
is  that  they  keep  out  of  reach.  Poor  hard- 
worked  poppa  can't  send  me  any  more 
money  just  now,  but  he'll  be  getting  a  bigger 
salary  next  year,  and  I  shall  be  able  to  go 
back  and  paint  a  masterpiece  for  the  Salon. 
In  the  meanwhile  I  shall  have  to  amuse  my 
self  as  best  I  can  sketching  about  the  place, 
and  watching  poppa  getting  through  big 
batches  of  couples.  He's  a  minister — you 
know  the  cloth's  hereditary  in  our  family — 
and  marries  off  people  wholesale." 

Till  that  moment  Miss  Brooke  had  been 
the  railway  king's  daughter.  For  Paul  to 
find  now  that  she  was  a  comparatively  poor 


®lje  Scantifnl  ifliss  JBrookc.         55 

girl,  whose  anxiety  to  earn  money  by  mak 
ing  her  mark  in  art  was  no  mere  jesting 
pretence,  involved  a  complete  readjustment 
of  his  mental  focus.  But  its  instantaneity 
made  the  operation  a  violent  one,  especially 
as  he  strove  hard  not  to  exhibit  any  external 
signs  of  discomposure.  At  the  same  time  a 
good  deal  that  had  bewildered  him  was  ex 
plained,  though  there  were  points  yet  on 
which  he  needed  enlightenment.  And  with 
all  his  astonishment  went  an  unbounded  ad 
miration  for  the  cheerful  way  in  which  she 
accepted  her  position,  the  lover's  keen  look 
out  for  every  scrap  of  virtue  in  the  beloved 
seizing  on  this  greedily  for  commendation. 
What  a  splendid,  plucky  girl  she  was!  The 
glamour  of  his  romance  was  heightened. 
Mere  millionaires  and  all  that  appertained  to 
them  seemed  suddenly  prosaic. 

Into  what  a  bizarre  misconception  had  he 
fallen !    She  herself  was  not  to  blame.     If  his 


56         ®l)e  Beautiful  ittiss  Brooke. 

mind  had  not  been  clogged  up  by  what 
Thorn  had  told  him  beforehand  he  would  not 
so  persistently  have  misunderstood  her  refer 
ences  to  money;  but  how  should  he  have 
thought  of  challenging  what  he  knew  only 
now  to  have  been  a  mere  speculative  rumour  ? 
There  had  been  nothing  in  her  appearance  and 
personality  to  belie  that  rumour,  and,  as  obvi 
ously  she  was  not  called  upon  to  contradict 
statements  about  herself  she  had  never  heard, 
such  manifestations  of  the  truth  as  had  since 
become  visible  to  him  had  only  served  to 
mystify  him. 

The  way,  too,  she  had  taken  certain  things 
for  granted  as  perfectly  natural  and  proper, 
somewhat  astonished  him,  to  wit,  her  inviting 
him  to  call  here,  her  reception  of  him  in  a  bed 
room,  and  his  presence  alone  with  her  now. 
These  facts  contravened  the  ideas  in  which  he 
had  been  brought  up,  and  he  could  only  sup 
pose  that  American  ideas  probably  differed 


®l)e  Beautiful  ittiss  Brooke.          57 

from  English.  This  surmise  seemed,  on  the 
whole,  corroborated  by  the  glimpse  he  had 
had  that  day  into  the  spirit  of  the  American 
independent  woman — a  type  entirely  new  to 
him — as  exemplified  both  by  Mrs.  Potter  and 
Miss  Brooke. 

He  asked  how  soon  she  was  leaving,  and 
learnt  she  was  sailing  on  the  Saturday,  so  that 
barely  two  days  of  London  remained  to  her. 
He  did  not  like  the  idea  at  all,  as  he  had 
formed  the  hope  he  might  somehow  see  her 
again  before  her  departure. 

"My  berth  is  taken,"  explained  Miss 
Brooke,  perhaps  amused  by  his  evident  dis 
content.  "Some  boxes  have  gone  on.  Be 
sides,  I  could  not  stay  here  any  longer. 
Dollars  are  getting  scarce.  I'm  going  to 
have  some  more  tea — won't  you  join 
me?" 

"Willingly."  He  wanted  to  stay  longer, 
and  tea,  by  filling  the  time  plausibly,  would 


58          £tje  Ucautiful  ill  is  s  Urookc. 

help  to  lessen  his  constraint  at  the  original 
position  in  which  he  found  himself. 

"I  am  so  pleased  you  were  able  to  call!  " 
went  on  Miss  Brooke,  as  she  poured  out  the 
beverage.  "You  haven't  forgotten  your 
promise  to  tell  me  all  about  your  work — and 
your  Utopia  as  well,"  she  added,  smiling,  and 
handing  him  his  cup. 

Her  sweetness  as  she  spoke  enchanted 
him.  When  he  himself  had  been  hesitating 
on  the  brink  of  the  chasm,  with  what  ease 
had  she  taken  him  across  it  at  one  leap !  Soon 
he  found  himself  telling  her  how  he  had  come 
to  abandon  his  father's  ideas  and  plan  out  his 
life  his  own  way,  with  as  much  emotion  as  if 
he  were  relating  his  inmost  secrets  to  an  affi 
anced  wife.  And  certainly  no  affianced  wife 
could  have  listened  with  a  graver  attention,  or 
more  sympathetic  demeanour. 

"Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  to  study 
architecture  at  Paris?"  she  asked.  "The 


Deantifai  ittiss  I3rooke.          59 


Beaux  Art  School  is,  I  think,  one  of  the  finest 
in  the  world,  and  you  could  scarcely  get  a 
more  artistic  atmosphere." 

The  effect  of  her  remark  was  as  that  of  an 
electric  spark  that  fuses  many  elements  into 
one  new  whole.  He  was  conscious  of  a 
struggling  chaotic  mass  of  thought,  followed 
by  a  clear  perception  of  the  conditions  of  his 
existence  in  all  its  bearings.  And  in  a  flash  he 
had  made  up  his  mind  to  plunge  into  the  deli 
cious  indefiniteness  of  what  offered  itself.  A 
soft  purple  haze  floated  before  him  as  in  a 
dream,  and  an  odour  of  incense  and  a  har 
mony  of  sweet  sounds  seemed  to  steal  upon 
him.  And  the  haze,  parting  a  moment, 
allowed  him  a  glimpse  of  a  magic  city  in  its 
depths.  And  in  that  city,  he  knew,  were 
"Lisa"  and  himself. 

That  was  to  be  the  future  !  The  awaken 
ing  of  the  man  in  him  was  complete.  By  an 
abrupt  mastercoup  he  would  wrench  himself 


60          (El)£  Iteanlifal  Miss  Srooke. 


away  from  the  influences  that  had  well-nigh 
reduced  him  to  a  puppet.  His  reply  to  Miss 
Brooke  now  would  be  the  beginning  of  the 
necessary  forward  impulse. 

"  The  idea  has  not  come  to  me,  though,  of 
course,  I  should  have  had  to  consider  the 
question  of  a  formal  course  before  very  long. 
But  I  like  the  suggestion  very  much." 

"  Lots  of  the  boys  take  the  course  there," 
added  Miss  Brooke.  "There  are,  of  course, 
many  more  American  than  English  boys,  but 
you'll  find  them  all  a  sociable  set." 

He  asked  for  details  about  the  student  life, 
and  Miss  Brooke  tried  to  give  him  some  notion 
of  it.  In  this  way  quite  half  an  hour  slipped 
by,  during  which  Paul  became  worked  up  to 
a  high  pitch  of  enthusiasm  and  took  care  to 
leave  no  doubt  in  Miss  Brooke's  mind  that  his 
decision  was  finally  taken. 

"Charlie,  too,  might  be  useful  to  you," 
said  Miss  Brooke,  as  Paul  rose  to  take  his 


f£I)e  Jteautiful  ittiss  Brooke.          61 

leave.  "I'm  sure  he'd  be  delighted  to  be  of 
service  to  you.  And  how  nice,  too,  if  we 
were  to  meet  there  again  !  Perhaps  we 
shall." 

Her  face  gleamed  as  with  the  pleasure  of 
anticipation. 

"I  shall  always  bear  the  hope  with  me," 
said  Paul  gravely  ;  and,  wishing  her  a  pleas 
ant  crossing,  he  bade  her  "good-bye." 

"Let  us  say  ' Au  revoir'  rather,"  and 
once  again  she  pressed  his  hand,  which  was 
more  than  he  had  dared  hope  for. 

But  what  had  "Charlie"  to  do  with  Miss 
Brooke  ?  he  asked  himself  a  thousand  times 
that  evening. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

A  MONTH  later — about  the  beginning  of 
June — Paul  had  entered  the  Ecole  des  Beaux 
Arts  as  a  student  of  architecture.  Not  to 
have  succeeded  in  tearing  himself  away 
would  have  been  to  lose  all  self-respect. 
He  had  determined  to  justify  himself  to 
himself,  to  prove  he  had  a  will  he  need 
not  be  ashamed  of.  Thus  it  was  that  his 
astonished  mother  and  a  favourite  uncle — 
Celia's  guardian — who  both  had  a  good  deal 
to  say  about  Paris  and  its  temptations,  ex 
pended  their  speech  to  no  purpose. 

Paul  entered  into  his  student  life  with  zest, 
working  hard  and  conscientiously  in  a  very 
methodical  fashion.  He  allowed  himself, 

62 


Beautiful  ittiss  Brooke.          63 


however,  plenty  of  time  for  enjoying  the 
city  ;  going  to  the  theatres,  and  peeping 
into  all  the  show  places,  and  hunting  up 
curios  at  old  shops,  and  lounging  and  play 
ing  billiards  at  the  cafes,  and  drinking  beer 
al  fresco  on  the  boulevards.  Occasionally 
he  rode  in  the  Bois,  or  made  excursions 
up  and  down  the  Seine,  and  into  the  neigh 
bouring  country  —  mostly,  of  course,  in  com 
pany,  for  he  soon  struck  acquaintance  with 
some  of  the  men,  many  of  whom  he  found 
had  to  manage  on  very  little  money.  So 
he  said  nothing  about  his  own  easy  cir 
cumstances,  rather  enjoying  the  two-franc 
seat  at  the  theatre  and  the  fifteen-centime 
ride  on  the  tops  of  tramcars.  When  he 
wanted  expensive  amusement  he  went 
alone. 

No  one  he  knew  had  so  far  mentioned 
Miss  Brooke's  name,  and  though  he  was 
often  on  the  point  of  asking  one  or  other 


Jtecwtifal  fttiss  Brooke. 


of  his  new  friends  about  her,  some  instinct 
invariably  restrained  him.  He  had  nurtured 
his  love  for  her,  all  his  solitary  thought 
turning  to  her,  and  it  seemed  a  sort  of 
sacrilege  to  make  even  the  most  innocent 
inquiry  about  her  in  her  absence.  This 
waiting  for  her  in  silence  was  part  of  the 
romance. 

He  understood  the  American  girl  a  little 
better  now,  fellow-students  having  introduced 
him  to  girl  friends  —  that  is  to  say,  he  was 
better  acquainted  with  her  and  her  ways. 
And  he  was  satisfied  that  whatever  ap 
peared  right  to  Miss  Brooke,  no  matter 
how  much  it  violated  his  own  notions, 
must  be  right  absolutely.  With  her  the 
fact  of  riches  or  poverty  was  reduced  to  a 
mere  indifferent  background,  against  which 
her  personality  stood  out  in  all  its  charm 
and  dignity.  A  girl  like  her  could  make 
her  home  in  one  room,  and  yet  make  you 


®lje  Beautiful  ittios  Brooke.          65 

welcome  in  it  with  as  much  ease  and  grace 
as  any  lady  in  a  fine  drawing-room. 

Time  passed,  and  still  nobody,  by  any 
chance,  referred  to  Miss  Brooke.  This  was 
not  surprising,  for  Paris  was  large,  and 
American  girl  students  were  plentiful  and 
scattered  all  over  it.  Moreover,  a  girl  who 
had  gone  home  months  before  was  likely 
to  be  soon  forgotten.  Pemberton  he  had 
never  met,  but  he  had  seen  him  just  once 
from  the  top  of  a  tramcar.  The  hot 
weather  came  on  and  Paul  passed  a  deli 
cious  month  at  Montmorency  in  company 
with  one  of  the  men.  After  his  return  he 
settled  to  work  again,  and  the  months 
went  by  almost  without  his  keeping  count 
of  them — for,  Miss  Brooke  having  mentioned 
a  year  as  the  time  she  was  likely  to  remain 
in  America,  he  would  not  look  for  her  till 
the  spring  came  on  again.  In  the  mean 
while  he  inflicted  much  misery  on  himself 


66         (Efye  Seautifnl  ittiss  Srook*. 


by  speculating  as  to  whether  home  and 
home  ties  might  not  have  absorbed  for 
good  so  ideal  and  affectionate  a  girl  as  he 
conceived  her  to  be,  especially  after  so  long 
a  residence  abroad.  But  deep  down  was 
implanted  in  him  an  unswerving  faith  in  her 
coming,  and,  though  the  manner  of  their 
meeting  had  been  left  so  undefined,  he 
was  certain  there  would  be  no  difficulty 
when  the  time  came,  and  that  his  life  after 
that  would  be  one  long  fairy  tale. 

The  spring  came  at  last,  and  with  it  ver- 
nissage  at  the  Salon.  Paul  knew  one  or 
two  men  who  were  exhibiting,  so  he  de 
cided  to  pass  his  afternoon  at  the  Palais  de 
1'Industrie.  The  tens  of  thousands  that 
thronged  the  galleries  made  picture-inspec 
tion  difficult  and  tedious  ;  but  the  crowd 
itself  presented  many  compensating  features 
of  interest.  Paul  was  hoping,  too,  he 
might  see  Miss  Brooke  there,  as  it  was 


ffilje  Beautiful  iJUss  Brooke.         67 

not  impossible  she  might  by  now  be  back 
in  Paris.  Occasionally  he  fancied  a  girl 
resembled  Miss  Brooke,  but  when,  after 
infinite  striving,  he  had  got  close  to  his 
quarry,  he  found  the  points  of  likeness 
were  but  few.  Once  or  twice  the  fair 
one  eluded  his  pursuit,  and  got  irretriev 
ably  swallowed  up. 

On  his  going  to  dtjeuner  the  next  day, 
at  a  little  restaurant  close  by  the  school, 
where  he  was  in  the  habit  of  dropping  in 
at  mid-day — he  dined  in  the  evening  in 
state  at  a  more  pretentious  establishment — 
there  sat  Miss  Brooke  herself  at  a  table  at 
the  end  of  the  room,  her  face  towards  the 
door.  None  of  the  usual  clients  had  yet 
arrived,  as  it  was  a  trifle  early,  and  made 
moiselle  was  distributing  the  newly-written 
menus  among  the  various  tables.  In  any 
case  he  must  have  caught  sight  of  her  at 
once,  as  the  cluster  of  sharp  red  and  black 


68          ®|)e  Beautiful  itties  Crooke. 

wings  that  shot  up  from  one  side  of  the 
little  toque,  which  just  seemed  to  rest  on 
her  hair,  drew  the  eye  at  once.  Her  face 
showed  glowing  and  bright,  set  above  the 
dark  mass  of  her  stuff  dress.  As  the  door 
swung  to  she  looked  up  from  the  menu  she 
had  been  studying. 

"  How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Middleton  ?  You 
seem  real  scared  to  see  me." 

Her  greeting  seemed  as  calm  and  laugh 
ing  as  if  they  had  but  parted  the  day  be 
fore,  and  Paul  felt  some  vague  dissatisfaction 
with  it — he  did  not  quite  know  why.  It 
seemed,  somehow,  as  if  there  were  no  ro 
mance  between  them  at  all,  as  if  they 
were  the  merest  acquaintances.  Perhaps  it 
was  that  the  pent-up  emotion  of  months 
of  waiting  needed  more  dramatic  expres 
sion  than  this  commonplace  situation  af 
forded. 

He  asked   permission,  and   sat  down  op- 


vi  IK  Ucuntiful  lUiss  JBrooke.          69 

posite  her,  scarcely  knowing  what  to  say 
to  her  first. 

"Can  you  tell  me  whether  cervelle  de 
"veau  is  anything  good  to  eat  ?  It's  the 
only  unfamiliar  thing  on  the  menu,  and  my 
only  hope." 

He  took  the  sheet  of  paper  as  she  held 
it  to  him,  but  found  the  dish  was  equally 
unknown  to  him.  They  appealed  to  made 
moiselle,  who  informed  them,  "  C'est  dans 
la  tete." 

"I  wonder  if  she  means  'brains.'  I  was 
hoping  not  to  have  to  translate  cervelle 
literally." 

"I  am  not  afraid  of  experimenting,"  sug 
gested  Paul. 

"For  my  benefit.  That  is  real  kind  of 
you.  Whenever  I've  been  curious  about 
things  with  strange  names,  I've  always  had 
to  order  them,  which  is  rather  an  expensive 
way  of  increasing  one's  French  vocabulary." 


70          ®|)e  Secrotifal  ittias  Srooke. 

When  the  dish  came,  neither  Paul  nor 
Miss  Brooke  liked  the  curly  look  of  it,  so 
they  fell  back  on  bifteck,  salad,  cheese,  and 
fruit. 

"And  so  you  are  here  after  all,"  said 
Miss  Brooke,  musingly. 

"Why?  Did  you  think  I  was  not  seri 
ous  about  coming  ?  " 

"I  didn't  mean  that.  My  expression  was 
a  sort  of  acknowledgment  to  myself  that  I 
had  found  you — or  rather,  to  be  proper, 
that  you  had  found  me." 

His  heart  fairly  leaped  with  pleasure. 
She  had  certainly  then  thought  of  him  dur 
ing  the  past  months  ! 

"I  must  thank  the  happy  chance  that  led 
you  in  here,"  he  murmured,  feeling  his  emo 
tion  at  length  control  him. 

"Happy  chance!"  She  charmed  his  ear 
with  a  ripple  of  laughter.  "Why,  I've  ex 
hausted  almost  every  restaurant  near  the 


®lje  Beautiful  Jfliss  Srooke.          71 

Beaux  Arts,  that  being  the  most  feminine  way 
of  pursuing  you.  The  mathematical  theory  of 
probability — college  learning  does  prove  useful 
at  times — told  me  the  happening  of  the  event, 
that  is,  of  the  event  I  wanted  to  happen,  was 
a  certainty.  For  some  particular  restaurant  or 
other  is  a  habit  which  everybody  contracts;  it 
is,  indeed,  the  first  vice  one  picks  up  in  Paris. 
And  it's  a  habit  that  can't  be  broken.  Day  after 
day  you  revolt — if  you're  a  man,  you  swear — 
against  the  cuisine.  Things  are  becoming  in 
tolerable.  Time  was  when  everything  was 
perfect,  when  the  menu  was  varied,  and 
always  included  your  favourite  dishes ;  when 
one  could  eat  the  salad  without  too  close  an 
inspection  of  the  under-side  of  the  leaves,  and 
when  the  wine  at  eighty  centimes  a  litre 
didn't  turn  blue  or  taste  like  ink.  To-day  is, 
most  certainly,  the  last  time  you  will  ever  set 
foot  in  the  place.  But  the  morrow  comes,  and 
at  dtjeuner  time  your  feet  bear  you  there 


72         ®l)e  Beautiful  lifties  Brooke. 

again,  and  you  are  so  meek  about  it  that  you 
scarcely  protest." 

"That  is  just  my  experience,"  he  con 
fessed. 

"I  was  sure  it  would  be.  That  is  what 
enabled  me  to  calculate  so  infallibly.  You  see 
I  speak  my  thoughts  quite  unashamed.  Paris 
makes  one  so  frightfully  immodest." 

"I'm  glad,  then,  I  didn't  take  it  into  my 
head  to  apply  the  same  method  in  my  search 
for  you.  Not  only  would  it  have  upset  your 
mathematics,  but,  having  no  particular  land 
mark,  I  might  have  wandered  on  forever. 
All  the  same,  I  have  kept  my  eyes  open.  In 
fact,  I  was  hoping  to  see  you  yesterday  at  ver- 
nissage." 

"Were  you  there?"  she  exclaimed. 
"  What  a  silly  question!  "  she  added  immedi 
ately,  laughing.  "What  I  meant  to  say  was 
/  was  there.  But,  of  course,  it  was  quite  im 
possible  to  find  any  one  in  such  a  crowd." 


®lje  Jteantifal  ifliss  Brooke.          73 

Paul  noticed  with  pleasure  that  the  conversa 
tion  on  both  sides  assumed  the  fact  of  a  posi 
tive  rendezvous  between  them.  Miss  Brooke 
went  on  to  chatter  about  the  vermssage. 

"I  see  this  morning's  Herald  puts  us 
down  as  a  low  lot.  Its  reporter  must  be  very 
exigeant.  In  spite  of  our  presence  he  insists 
the  models  gave  the  ton  to  the  assembly." 

"Were  there  many  models  present?" 
asked  Paul.  "  I  don't  remember  seeing  any." 

"There  were  quite  enough  of  them  to  be 
noticeable.  Perhaps  you  thought  they  were 
all  countesses." 

"I  did  have  some  such  idea,"  he  admitted. 
"I  didn't  know  models  dressed  like  count 
esses." 

"They  do  when  their  artists  take  them  to 
vernissage.  Which  affords  food  for  reflec 
tion." 

Paul  felt  slightly  embarrassed  and  did  not 
answer. 


74         ®b*  Seontifttl  iflieo  Srooke. 


"And  now,"  resumed  Miss  Brooke,  con 
templating  her  CCBUT  d  la  creme,  "if  I  may 
venture  to  intrude  on  your  reflections,  will  you 
please  pass  me  the  sugar  ?  " 

"Is  it  long  since  you  returned?"  he  in 
quired  soon.  "I  was  going  to  ask  you  be 
fore,  only  the  cervelle  puzzle  arose  and  some 
how  I  forgot." 

"Just  three  weeks,"  she  replied.  "  Poppa 
had  his  bigger  salary,  and  as  it  was  getting 
tedious  seeing  couples  married  I  made  haste  to 
come  over  again.  You  can't  imagine  how 
impatient  I  was  to  get  back  in  time  for  verms- 
sage.  It  gives  such  a  fillip  to  your  ambitions 
to  see  crowds  round  your  friends'  pictures, 
and  to  read  about  them  in  the  papers;  it 
makes  you  realise  your  own  powers,  and  sets 
you  wondering  why  you  hadn't  dared  to 
send  something  in.  When  you  are  tired  of 
lamenting  your  folly  you  begin  to  admire 
your  modesty,  and  of  course  you  remem- 


Beautiful  itliss  Brooke.          75 


ber  that  modesty  is  the  mark  of  true 
genius." 

"And  you  had  all  those  thoughts?" 

"  Oh,  no!  They  are  the  thoughts  I  should 
have  had  if  I  hadn't  been  busy  admiring  the 
dresses.  The  pictures  must  wait  —  I  shall  be 
going  again  to  see  those,  perhaps  two  or 
three  times.  Most  students  do.  One  is  sup 
posed  to  learn  from  them,  but  in  practice  one 
only  criticises.  The  boys  say  everything  is 
rotten.  We  girls  pretend  to  agree  with  them, 
only,  of  course,  it  wouldn't  be  proper  to  ex 
press  our  opinion  as  violently  as  that.  Do 
you  dine  here  as  well  ?  " 

"  I  dine  as  the  whim  takes  me.  You  see  I 
haven't  yet  acquired  a  habit  for  evening  wear. 
Not  every  Bohemian  can  make  that  boast." 

Miss  Brooke  laughed.  "Bohemians 
mostly  acquire  bad  habits  for  evening  wear. 
But  I'm  going  to  cut  Bohemianism  altogether 
so  far  as  my  meals  are  concerned,  and  settle 


76          ®l)e  Beantifnl  IVliss  Brooke. 

down  in  a  pension.  Two  or  three  of  the  girls 
live  there,  and  they  report  well  of  it.  I  also 
made  friends  while  crossing  with  a  girl  who 
was  being  consigned  there." 

He  asked  whether  she  had  had  a  good 
crossing,  and  whether  she  were  a  good  sailor. 
Miss  Brooke  replied  that  the  weather  had  been 
perfect  the  whole  way  and  she  had  enjoyed 
herself,  and  she  proceeded  to  entertain  him  by 
relating  incidents  of  the  passage.  Meanwhile 
the  little  restaurant  had  filled,  and  was  nearly 
empty  again.  They  rose  at  last  and  settled 
their  additions.  Paul  then  noticed  that  Miss 
Brooke  had  her  painting  materials  with  her, 
and  insisted  on  carrying  them  so  far  as  her 
school.  They  stepped  out  into  the  sunshine, 
and  became  aware  how  fine  a  day  it  was. 

"The  afternoon  almost  tempts  me  to  cut 
the  Beaux  Arts,"  said  Paul. 

"By  the  way,  how  are  you  getting  on 
there?"  asked  Miss  Brooke. 


fElje  JBeantiful  ifli0s  Srooke.         77 

He  was  only  too  eager  to  tell  her  of  his 
progress,  and  to  discuss  his  chances  of  a 
medal.  He  also  gave  her  an  account  of  the 
new  friends  he  had  made — he  liked  the  Amer 
ican  "boys"  very  much,  was  indebted  to 
them  for  endless  kindnesses. 

"  Why  didn't  you  look  up  Charlie?"  she 
asked  suddenly. 

"  How  could  I  ?"  he  asked,  annoyed  at  the 
mention  of  the  man's  name,  reminding  him, 
as  it  did,  of  the  apparent  and  inexplicable 
intimacy  between  the  two,  and  also  tell 
ing  him  they  must  already  have  seen  each 
other. 

"You  could  easily  have  found  him  if  you 
had  inquired  among  the  boys.  He  lives  in  his 
studio  and  he  has  scarcely  left  it  the  whole 
time  I've  been  away.  By  the  way,  you  re 
member  Katharine,  don't  you  ?  "She's  married 
again.  To  her  editor  this  time.  This  is  my 
school." 


78         fftfye  Beautiful  Miss  Srooke. 

They  came  to  a  standstill  and  faced  each 
other  to  say  "good-bye." 

"I  scarcely  feel  like  working  this  after 
noon,"  observed  Miss  Brooke.  "My  laziness 
really  overpowers  my  ambition.  Did  you  not 
say  something  before,  Mr.  Middleton,  about 
your  being  tempted  to  cut  the  Beaux  Arts? 
Do  be  nice  and  yield  to  that  temptation.  I 
want  to  give  way  to  mine  so  badly,  but  being 
a  woman  I  daren't  do  anything  unless 
somebody  else  is  doing  it  at  the  same 
time." 

Paul's  fibres  of  resistance  did  not  relax 
gradually ;  they  collapsed  all  at  once. 

"  Well,"  he  laughed.  "  I've  been  so  good 
all  along,  I  think  I've  earned  the  right  to  play 
truant  for  once." 

"  Mr.  Middleton!  That's  bringing  morality 
into  it  again,  and  I  wanted  to  indulge  in  undi 
luted  wickedness.  You  have  to  carry  my 
box  as  I'm  sufficiently  occupied  in  holding  up 


(The  Beautiful  ittiss  Brooke.          79 

my  skirts.     I'll  give  you  some  tea  afterwards 
as  a  reward." 

They  strolled  slowly  in  the  sunshine,  mak 
ing  for  the  river  and  crossing  by  the  Pont  des 
Arts;  and  passed  through  the  Jardins  des 
Tuileries,  where  the  freshness  of  the  greens, 
and  the  playing  fountains,  and  the  leafy  trees, 
and  the  pretty  children,  and  the  odour  of  lilac 
proclaimed  the  spring.  They  sauntered  across 
the  Place  de  la  Concorde  and  into  the  shady 
avenues  of  the  Champs  Elysees,  where  huge 
spots  of  sunlight  freckled  the  ground;  talking 
the  while  of  the  life  of  the  city,  of  the  foreign 
elements,  of  the  Old  and  New  Salons.  Miss 
Brooke  explained  how  her  own  day  was 
spent.  Seven  o'clock  in  the  morning  found 
her  punctually  at  school,  and  she  worked  two 
hours  before  taking  her  caft  au  lait,  after 
wards  continuing  till  midday.  In  the  after 
noon  she  usually  copied  and  studied  at  the 
Louvre  or  Luxembourg.  Such  had  been  the 


8o         Qtlje  JJeatUifal  Miss  jtooke. 

routine  of  her  work  before,  and  she  had  had 
no  difficulty  in  falling  into  it  again.  She 
could  not  hope  to  exhibit  even  next  year,  as 
she  could  neither  afford  a  studio  nor  the  ex 
pense  of  models.  At  the  present  she  was  liv 
ing  with  some  friends  at  their  appartement  in 
the  Avenue  de  Wagram.  After  their  depart 
ure  at  the  end  of  May  she  would  enter  into 
the  pension,  which  was  within  a  stone's 
throw  of  her  school. 

Paul,  eagerly  listening  to  all  these  details, 
was  only  conscious  in  a  far-off  way  of  the 
eternal  roll  of  smart  carriages  in  the  roadway, 
or  of  the  multitude  of  children  playing  under 
the  trees  in  charge  of  bonnes,  whilst  the  mam 
mas  sat  about  on  chairs,  chatting,  or  with 
books  or  needlework.  Onward  the  pair 
strolled  past  the  Arc  de  Triomphe  and  down 
the  great  Avenue  into  the  Bois  de  Boulogne, 
only  stopping  to  rest  by  the  laughing  lake. 
Here  the  appeal  of  the  water  and  the  moored 


Seantifal  itliss  Crooke.          81 


boats  soon  became  irresistible.  They  fleeted 
the  remainder  of  the  afternoon  ideally,  till 
Miss  Brooke  announced  it  was  time  to  re 
pair  to  the  Avenue  de  Wagram.  Paul  was 
afraid  of  her  friends  —  he  was  scarcely  pre 
sentable. 

"Be  calm,  my  friend,"  she  reassured 
him.  "We  shall  have  a  nice  little  tea  all 
to  ourselves.  The  others  have  gone  to 
Versailles  and  are  only  coming  back  in 
time  to  dine.  We  dine  che%  nous,  as  we 
have  a  bonne  who  cooks.  Of  course  I 
can't  be  in  to  dejeuner,  as  the  distance  is 
too  great  from  my  school.  You  must  come 
one  evening  and  I'll  present  you." 

He  thanked  her  for  the  suggestion,  glad 
to  welcome  every  arrangement  that  promised 
in  any  way  to  throw  their  lives  together, 
for  he  had  been  not  a  little  afraid  he  might 
not  after  all  have  the  opportunity  of  seeing 
very  much  of  her. 


82          (The  Ucantiful  ffliss  Brooke. 

As  Miss  Brooke  made  the  tea  in 
the  pretty  drawing  room  of  the  cosy  flat, 
Paul  began  to  realise  with  surprise  how 
much  progress  their  friendship  had  made 
in  that  one  day.  His  dream  had  turned 
out  true  !  He  was  so  happy  that  the  con 
sciousness  of  all  but  the  moment  faded 
from  him.  London,  his  mother,  Celia, 
and  even  chess  were  for  the  time  abso 
lutely  non-existent.  "Charlie,"  too,  was 
forgotten,  as  the  obnoxious  name  had 
not  again  dropped  from  Miss  Brooke's 
lips. 

He  took  his  leave  at  last,  filled  with  joy 
by  Miss  Brooke's  promise  to  run  in  on  the 
morrow  to  dejeuner  at  the  same  little  res 
taurant.  But  as  he  turned  from  the  broad 
stairway  into  the  hall,  he  almost  collided 
in  his  pre-occupation  with  a  tall  well- 
dressed  man.  Both  murmured  "Pardon!" 
and  pursued  their  ways.  Paul  had  seen 


®l)e  Beautiful  UU00  Brooke.         83 

the  other's  face,  but  he  had  taken  several 
steps  forward  before  the  features  sank 
into  his  brain,  and  he  realised  with  a 
great  shock  they  were  those  of  "Char 
lie." 


CHAPTER  V. 

HOWEVER,  Miss  Brooke  said  nothing  to 
him  about  Charlie  in  the  days  that  followed, 
though  he  saw  her  often.  Without  it  being 
specially  mentioned  again,  it  was  somehow 
understood  they  were,  for  the  present,  to 
meet  at  mid-day  at  the  little  restaurant,  and, 
moreover,  she  allowed  him  to  take  her  sev 
eral  times  to  the  two  Salons.  He  might 
easily  have  dragged  in  references  to  Pem- 
berton,  but  he  felt  it  would  not  be  right 
to  do  so  for  the  mere  purpose  of  discover 
ing  what  it  would  have  been  an  imperti 
nence  to  demand  outright. 

And  the  more  his  camaraderie  with  Miss 
Brooke  became  an  established  fact,  the  more 

84 


Becmtifnl  ittiss  Brooke.          85 


did  this  question  of  Charlie  disturb  him. 
He  had  discovered  by  this  time  that  a 
harmless  friendship  between  a  man  and  a 
girl  was  by  no  means  unusual  among  the 
students  and  was  not  necessarily  assumed 
to  imply  matrimonial  intentions.  He  knew, 
moreover,  that  such  friendships  grew  rapidly 
on  this  soil  where  the  English-speaking  stu 
dents  gravitated  together  during  the  years 
of  their  voluntary  exile.  But,  if  this  thought 
pacified  him  as  to  Miss  Brooke  and  Charlie, 
the  very  pacification  carried  with  it  a  sting. 
For  it  led  to  the  further  tormenting  suspi 
cion  that  Miss  Brooke  did  not  take  the 
relationship  between  her  and  himself  as 
seriously  as  he  would  have  liked  her  to. 
Her  conduct  and  bearing  towards  him  were 
all  he  could  wish,  yet  he  seemed  to  feel 
behind  them  a  stern  limit  to  the  intimacy, 
a  barrier,  as  it  were,  that  might  bear  on 
its  face  :  "I  am  put  here  by  way  of  giv- 


86         (Elje  Seantifal  #Uss  i3rooke. 

ing  you  a  reminder  you  are  not  to  make 
any  mistakes  as  to  the  extent  of  your 
rights  over  this  property." 

Sometimes,  indeed,  in  envisaging  the 
position,  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
this  was  entirely  due  to  his  own  imagina 
tion  and  that  he  might  safely  ask  her  to 
share  his  life.  But  at  that  point  uncertainty 
would  rise  again,  warning  him  that  to 
make  any  such  impulsive  proposition  just 
then  might  be  to  jeopardise  the  future  of 
his  romance.  The  remembrance  of  the  dis 
tress  caused  him  by  his  effort  to  determine 
the  precise  degree  of  Celia's  claim  on 
him  by  reason  of  his  having  engaged  her 
for  five  dances  in  the  same  evening  in 
truded  in  grotesque  contrast  now  that  he 
was  endeavouring  to  determine  the  precise 
degree  of  his  claim  on  Miss  Brooke. 

Despite  these  prickings,  and  despite 
Charlie,  sweetness  predominated  in  his  life. 


ffil)e  Beantifnl  4JU0S  Brooke.          87 

He  felt  untrammelled  and  unwatched  over, 
recalling  with  a  shudder  the  old  strands  that 
had  tethered  him.  Though  he  wrote  regu 
larly  to  his  mother,  whom  he  had  seen  twice 
last  autumn,  on  her  way  southward  and  on 
her  return,  all  reference  to  Miss  Brooke  was 
excluded  from  his  letters.  He  would  not 
discuss  his  relation  to  her  with  anybody 
else,  foreseeing  that  would  only  lead  to  a 
deal  of  useless  and  perhaps  endless  talk. 

After  Miss  Brooke  had  moved  to  the  pen 
sion,  where  she  had  arranged  to  take  all 
her  meals,  he  no  longer  saw  her  every 
day.  But  it  was  understood  he  could  take 
his  chance  of  finding  her  at  home  when 
ever  he  chose  to  call  in  the  evenings. 
She  generally  received  him  in  her  little 
oblong  sitting-room  on  the  second  floor, 
that  opened  out  on  a  pleasant  balcony, 
overlooking  the  street.  He  soon  grew  to 
love  this  room,  to  the  decorations  of  which 


88         ®l)e  Beautiful  Jttiss  Brooke. 

she  had  added  a  huge  Japanese  umbrella, 
which  hung  from  the  ceiling,  and  two  Jap 
anese  lights,  and  a  piece  of  Oriental  tapestry, 
besides  her  personal  nicknacks.  Paul's  usual 
lounging-place,  whilst  Miss  Brooke  gave  him 
his  after-dinner  coffee,  was  an  old  cretonne- 
covered  ottoman,  on  which  a  broken  spring 
made  a  curious  hump,  and  over  his  head 
were  suspended  some  book-shelves.  Now 
and  again  he  would  find  other  callers,  of 
both  sexes,  for  Miss  Brooke  was  "at 
home "  once  a  week  to  all  her  friends. 
Of  course,  Paul  did  not  abuse  his  privilege, 
but  firmly  restricted  the  number  of  his  visits. 
Occasionally,  too,  he  had  the  happiness  of 
taking  her  to  dine  at  some  one  or  other 
of  the  great  cafes  on  the  Grands  Boule 
vards,  and  they  would  stroll  back  together 
along  the  river  bank,  enchanted  by  the 
wonderful  nocturnes.  On  Sunday  some 
times,  they  would  make  an  excursion  be- 


®l)c  JJecmtifal  4JU00  Drooke.          89 

yond  the  fortifications  to  some  rural  spot, 
she  taking  her  paint-box  and  sketching 
lazily  whilst  they  talked ;  and  if,  on  rare 
afternoons,  he  left  his  work,  and  looked  in 
at  the  Luxembourg  to  find  her  deftly  ply 
ing  her  brush  in  her  big  blue  coarse  linen 
apron,  with  its  capacious  pockets,  she 
seemed  by  no  means  displeased. 

Every  legitimate  topic  was  talked  over 
between  them.  He  had  long  since  ex 
hausted  the  theme  of  his  own  life,  that 
is,  he  had  told  it  so  far  as  he  cared  to 
tell  it.  Celia,  for  one  thing,  did  not  appear 
in  it,  and  there  were  one  or  two  little  mat 
ters  he  was  especially  careful  to  suppress. 
He  felt  vaguely  saint-like,  when,  in  the 
course  of  this  judicious  selection  from  his 
biography,  he  arrived  at  his  slumming  ex 
periences,  and  hinted  at  his  charities,  which 
were  being  continued  during  his  absence. 
Miss  Brooke  repaid  the  confidence  in  kind, 


90          ®l)e  JJecintifal  IHisG  JJrooke. 

enabling  him,  by  her  various  reminiscences, 
to  reconstruct  a  fairly  continuous  account  of 
her  existence,  which,  it  never  struck  him, 
might  also  be  selected. 

They  drifted,  too,  into  the  realm  of  ideas, 
exchanging  their  notions  on — among  other 
things — love  and  platonic  friendship.  They 
discussed  the  last-mentioned  phenomenon  in 
great  detail,  Paul,  aflame  with  self-conscious 
ness,  but  quite  unable  to  pierce  beneath  the 
sphinx-like  demeanour  with  which  Miss 
Brooke  made  her  impartial  and  freezingly 
impersonal  statements.  From  ideas  they 
passed  on  to  the  consideration  of  conduct 
and  how  it  should  be  determined  under 
divers  subtle  conditions. 

"Yes,  but  don't  you  really  think  that 
one  ought  to  listen  to  such  an  appeal 
if.  .  .  .  ,"  she  would  gravely  interpose 
with  her  sweet  voice  as  her  brush  made 
sensuous  strokes  on  the  canvas.  And  Paul 


QTlje  Beantifal  .ftties  Brooke.          91 

became  more  and  more  impressed  with  the 
nobility  of  her  soul,  and  strove  likewise — as 
was  but  natural  in  the  circumstances — to 
impress  her  with  the  nobility  of  his.  He 
usually  felt  ethically  perfect  after  such  con 
versations,  and,  had  the  occasion  immedi 
ately  arisen,  it  would  have  found  him  equal 
to  acting  along  the  lines  of  the  "ought" 
laid  down  by  Miss  Brooke.  He  imagined 
that  he  certainly  was  receiving  endless 
benefit  from  this  threshing  out  of  things 
with  a  quick  and  sympathetic  personality. 

So  ran  by  a  couple  of  months,  "Charlie" 
continuing  to  be  the  chief  cause  of  disturb 
ance  in  Paul's  existence.  The  two  men  had 
by  now  met  several  times  at  Miss  Brooke's, 
had  saluted  civilly,  but  had  little  to  say  to 
each  other.  Paul  felt  sure  his  hatred  was 
returned,  and  neither  showed  the  least  dispo 
sition  to  become  better  acquainted.  Neither 
asked  the  other  to  dine  or  drink,  or  play 


92          ®l)e  Sucmtifal  ittiss  Crooke. 

billiards,  or  even  to  walk  with  him,  and  if 
rarely  they  passed  in  the  street  a  nod  was 
all  they  exchanged.  The  lines  of  their  lives 
occasionally  met  in  a  point,  but  never  ran 
together. 

The  enmity  between  them  only  became 
irksome  when  no  others  were  present,  but 
never  did  Miss  Brooke  herself  manifest  the 
least  suspicion  of  it.  Whatever  the  relation 
between  Miss  Brooke  and  Pemberton,  it 
never  seemed  to  interfere  in  practice  with 
the  relation  between  Miss  Brooke  and  him 
self.  She  alluded  to  "Charlie"  in  her  talk 
much  more  freely  than  heretofore,  but  al 
ways  apropos,  always  impersonally,  just  as 
she  might  casually  mention  Katharine,  who 
was  so  happy  now.  Charlie  had  such  and 
such  a  habit,  such  and  such  a  way  of  look 
ing  at  things,  such  and  such  ideas  of  art. 

But  Paul's  jealousy  grew  till  he  became 
well-nigh  intolerable  to  himself.  It  made  him 


£l]t  tkiuitifnl  ittioG  ijrookc.  93 

resort  to  underhand  watchings,  from  the  mere 
thought  of  which,  in  saner  moments,  he 
shrank  with  shame  and  remorse.  But  he  had 
thus  ascertained  that  Charlie  was,  if  anything, 
a  more  frequent  visitor  than  himself,  and  had 
less  scruples  in  the  matter  of  standing  on  cere 
mony. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

ONE  night  Paul  was  at  the  Opera  when  he 
caught  sight  of  Miss  Brooke  and  Pemberton 
with  her.  His  evening  was  spoilt  and  he  left 
at  once.  He  felt  both  angry  and  hurt,  for  he 
had  seen  her  for  a  few  minutes  in  the  after 
noon,  and  she  had  said  nothing  about  her 
plans  for  the  evening  beyond  warning  him  it 
was  highly  probable  she  might  not  be  at 
home. 

The  climax  had  come.  He  was  deter 
mined  that  things  should  not  continue  as  they 
were.  If  Miss  Brooke  simply  regarded  their 
connection  as  a  mere  students'  companionship, 
agreeable  to  both  parties  but  strictly  tempo 
rary,  then  he  must  end  it  immediately.  Miss 

94 


Ueantifnl  iUiQQ  Brooke.          95 


Brooke  must  at  once  be  made  aware  of  what 
this  friendship  meant  to  him.  What  he  had 
so  far  deemed  inexpedient  seemed  to  him 
the  only  expediency  —  to  stake  all  on  one 
coup. 

In  the  stress  of  the  crisis  the  prejudices 
that  were  his  by  inheritance  and  teaching, 
and  that  his  new  life  had  caused  to  slum 
ber,  asserted  themselves  again,  crying  aloud 
against  these  friendships.  Miss  Brooke  ought 
never  to  have  expected  him  to  be  proof 
against  that  sort  of  thing,  of  which  he  had 
never  had  experience.  Pemberton  might  be 
able  and  content  to  flutter  round  without  hurt, 
but  he  himself  had  been  a  lost  man  from  the 
beginning. 

It  soothed  him  to  map  out  the  future  as  he 
wished  it  to  be,  and  all  seemed  so  natural  and 
reasonable  that,  if  she  cared  for  him  in  the 
least,  she  could  not  but  admit  his  views  on 
every  point.  He  felt  himself  filled  with  an 


96         ®|)e  JJeantifal  Jttiss  Srcoke. 

infinite  longing,  an  infinite  tenderness.  He 
would  surround  her  with  his  love  so  that 
escape  from  it  should  be  impossible.  It  should 
permeate  every  fibre  of  her  being,  and  she 
should  in  the  end  come  to  him  and  give  up 
everything  to  fulfil  the  duties  of  a  wife,  presid 
ing  over  his  household,  absorbing  herself  in 
his  career,  and  giving  all  her  thought  to  the 
unity  their  two  lives  would  constitute.  Of 
course,  she  could  paint  in  such  time  as  was 
left  to  her,  and  any  glory  she  might  achieve 
would  redound  to  the  credit  of  his  name. 
Still  when  a  woman  had  once  become  a  wife, 
he  argued,  her  ambition  generally  faded. 
Wifehood  was  absorbing.  Greater  glory  than 
that  of  being  a  perfect  wife  there  could 
not  be. 

A  few  days  later,  when  his  emotion  had 
somewhat  calmed  down,  and  he  could  trust 
himself  sufficiently  to  see  her,  he  called  at  the 
pension,  but,  as  had  happened  occasionally 


<TlK  Ucauliful  ittiGG  Drookc.          97 

from  the  beginning,  he  did  not  find  her  at 
home.  So  the  next  morning  he  sent  her  a 
great  heterogeneous  mass  of  flowers  with  the 
half-jesting,  half-reproachful  hope  they  might 
meet  with  better  fortune  than  he.  Where 
upon  he  immediately  received  a  letter  explain 
ing  she  had  passed  the  previous  evening  with 
some  very  nice  people  in  the  Avenue  Kleber, 
and  announcing  her  intention  of  taking  him 
there  on  the  morrow.  Would  he  dine  early 
and  call  for  her?  She  thanked  him  for  the 
flowers  in  a  postscript,  saying  they  had  trans 
formed  her  room  into  a  veritable  bower. 

At  the  time  appointed  he  climbed  the  well- 
known  two  flights  of  stairs  and  the  bonne 
showed  him  into  the  little  room,  saying  made 
moiselle  would  join  him  "in  a  little  minute." 
Several  big  minutes  passed,  and  then  the 
door-hanging  was  pushed  aside  and  Miss 
Brooke  stood  smiling  at  him.  She  had  always 
appealed  to  his  aesthetic  side,  giving  him  the 


98         ®|)£  Beautiful  411100  Brooke. 

sense  of  contemplating  an  exquisite  piece  of 
art-work;  but  the  particular  impression  he 
had  to-night  differed  from  all  previous  ones. 
Her  figure  seemed  slenderer  in  its  black  net 
evening  dress,  covered  with  bead-work  that 
glistened  with  a  wonderful  shading  of  green 
into  blue  and  blue  into  green.  Above  the  tur 
quoise-blue  velvet  trimming  of  the  bodice,  her 
long  neck  made  a  dazzling  whiteness,  and  her 
face  looked  pink  and  babyish,  whilst  her  curls 
lay  about  with  just  a  shade  more  severity  than 
usual.  She  wore  a  necklace  of  turquoises  set 
in  antique  gold,  and  in  her  hair  was  a  big  gold 
comb  inset  with  the  same  stones,  irregularly 
cut.  The  note  of  colour  thus  given  made  her 
blue  eyes  appear  like  two  large  jewels  amid 
the  constellation.  Paul  told  himself  he  had 
never  realised  before  how  beautiful  those  eyes 
were.  The  lightly-parted  lips  intensified  the 
babyishness,  so  that  she  ceased  to  be  the  in 
dependent,  self-willed  girl,  fitting  in  rather 


®l)e  Beantifai  Iitti00  Brook*.         99 

with  that  other  conception  he  had  lingered  on 
as  the  ideal  she  might  develop  into  as  his  wife 
— a  woman  clinging  to  her  husband  and  glad 
of  his  strength. 

He  was  sure  he  saw  her  now  as  she  really 
was.  The  conditions  of  her  life  were  alone  to 
blame  for  forcing  on  her  the  necessity  of  a 
career.  Woman's  true  sphere  was  the  home. 
An  outside  existence  subjected  to  hardening 
influences  a  delicate  soul  whose  very  nature 
was  to  thirst  for  tender  nurture  and  love. 
Such  had  always  been  his  mother's  convic 
tion;  such  was  his  fervent  belief.  The  asso 
ciation  of  Miss  Brooke  with  money-earning 
seemed  an  ugly  blot  on  the  universe. 

There  seemed,  too,  a  tenderer,  more  inti 
mate  quality  in  her  voice,  and  a  sort  of  cling 
ing  in  her  touch  as  she  went  down  the 
stairway  with  her  hand  on  his  arm.  That  for 
bidding  barrier  of  which  he  had  always  been 
conscious  had  vanished! 


ioo       (Elje  Bscmiifal  ittifis  Braoke. 


"It's  the  McCook'slast  'At-Home,'"  she 
explained,  as  the  voiture  began  to  move. 
"They  are  such  nice  people  —  I'm  sure  you'll 
like  them.  Dora's  an  old  college  chum  of 
mine,  and  she's  asked  me  to  stay  with  her  to 
night.  Dora  and  I  chat  such  a  deal  when  we 
get  together,  and  we  always  enjoy  sitting  up 
nice  and  quiet  by  ourselves  after  every 
body  else  has  gone.  I  told  her  you  would 
escort  me  home,  but  she  seemed  quite 
shocked  at  the  idea.  As  if  you  haven't  es 
corted  me  back  from  the  theatre!  Dora  has 
become  quite  conventional  since  her  marriage. 
She  used  to  argue  with  her  mother  and  do 
pretty  well  as  she  liked  not  so  very  long  ago, 
Now  I  believe  her  mother  shocks  her  some 
times.  She's  leaving  with  her  husband  in  a 
few  days  for  Perros-Guirec,  and  they're  going 
to  take  me  with  them." 

Her  words  rang  with  a  childlike  joy.     He 
asked  where  Perros-Guirec  was  in  a  voice  that 


®t)e  Beautiful  iHies  Brooke.        101 

was  somewhat  desolate  at  the  prospect  of  los 
ing  her* 

"It's  in  Brittany — a  whole  day's  journey 
from  Paris.  I  was  there  two  years  ago,  and 
sketched  most  of  the  time.  Everybody  is 
thinking  of  leaving  now,  the  heat  will  soon  be 
getting  unbearable.  The  Grand  Prix  has  been 
run,  the  Battle  of  Flowers  has  been  fought, 
and  the  Alice  de  Longchamps  is  deserted.  All 
the  smart  people  are  in  villegiature.  How 
nice  is  the  evening  after  the  sultry  day!" 

They  were  passing  through  the  Boulevard 
St.  Germain.  Miss  Brooke  was  sitting  just 
close  enough  to  Paul  for  them  to  touch  with 
the  swaying  of  the  carriage.  He  felt  singu 
larly  happy.  The  hushed  sounds  of  the  city 
over  which  the  dusk  hung  mystic  came  to 
him  like  a  soft  sustained  tone  of  music;  its 
lights  gleamed  in  upon  them  with  magic  rays. 
He  was  conscious  of  the  great  dark  masses  of 
palaces,  of  shadowy  pedestrians  moving  noise- 


102        £l)c  Beautiful  Miss  Brooke. 

lessly  on  the  side-paths.  No  fever  in  the  air 
now,  only  a  far-reaching  calm. 

"The  night  makes  one  almost  sorry  to 
leave  Paris,"  resumed  Miss  Brooke.  Her  voice 
made  the  harmonies  sweeter,  blending  them 
all  into  one  perfect  harmony. 

"But  the  breezes,  and  the  woods,  and  the 
rye-fields,  and  the  farm-houses  with  their  de 
licious  old  oak  presses,  and  the  kind-hearted 
people,  and  the  quaint  children  who  love  to 
watch  you  sketch  and  see  you  squeeze  the 
paint  out  of  the  tubes — the  memory  of  all 
these  things  draws  you  back  to  them.  I  long 
for  Brittany  almost  as  much  as  I  once  longed 
to  leave  everything  and  everybody  and  be  just 
myself — and  by  myself.  It  seems  so  long  ago 
now." 

She  had  almost  unconsciously  moved 
closer  to  him  now. 

"Won't  you  tell  me  when  that  was — 
Lisa?" 


(Efye  Beautiful  illiss  Brooke.        103 

It  was  the  first  time  he  had  dared  to  call 
her  by  this  name.  In  his  longing  to  utter  it  in 
articulate  speech  it  had  rushed  to  the  tip  of  his 
tongue. 

"It  was  three  years  ago — before  I  came 
here.  Every  place  had  associations  that  hurt 
me.  I  wanted  to  get  away — to  work,  work, 
work.  I  seemed  to  hate  everybody.  So  I 
came  here,  and  for  months  I  thought  I  was  as 
hard  as  a  stone.  Then  one  day  I  found  myself 
angry  with  a  girl — a  fellow-student — and  I 
was  quite  surprised  to  find  I  could  feel  at  all. 
And  then  I  was  suddenly  glad  I  was  a  human 
being  again." 

Her  voice  melted  away  into  the  vast 
murmur  of  the  soft-twinkling  city.  Beyond 
the  fact  that  he  was  selfishly  glad  she  had 
had  trouble — it  afforded  him  the  exquisite 
pleasure  of  sympathy — there  was  no  active 
thought  in  him  now,  no  estimation  of  the 
position.  His  soul  alone  dominated  ;  it  had 


104        ®l)e  Betwtifal  Jttiss  Srooke. 

been  moved  to  responsiveness  and  it  now 
wrought  out  its  mood,  subtly  surrounding 
her,  he  felt,  with  its  comfort. 

They  crossed  the  mysterious,  glistening 
river,  and  came  upon  the  myriad  flame- 
points  of  the  Place  de  la  Concorde.  They 
turned  into  the  Champs  Elysees  betwixt 
woods  enchanted  by  the  sorcerer  Night ; 
catching  glimpses  of  palaces  of  light  amid 
the  trees  whence  melody  came  floating, 
mingled  with  the  incense  of  the  summer. 

"Won't  you  tell  me,  Lisa — that  is,  if 
you  think  you  can  trust  me." 

It  was  sweet  to  exercise  the  privilege  of 
calling  her  "Lisa."  He  felt  it  was  his  for 
always  now. 

"I  know  I  can  trust  you,  Paul.  Would 
you  really  care  to  hear?  Of  course  you 
would,"  she  continued  quickly,  giving  him 
no  time  to  reply.  "What  a  silly  question 
for  me  to  ask  !  Still  there  is  little  to  tell ! 


®l)e  Seautifal  iflies  Srookc.        105 

I  loved  a  man.  We  were  to  be  married. 
His  mind  was  poisoned  against  me  by  an 
enemy.  He  was  harsh  and  unjust.  A  few 
words  sum  all  up.  He  is  married  to  an 
other.  A  commonplace  chapter,  is  it  not? 
But  to  have  lived  through  it — to  have  lived 
through  it!" 

He  grew  dazed  and  white.  "To  have 
lived  through  it ! "  Those  simple  words 
seemed  to  his  comprehending  mood  athrob 
with  the  sobbing  of  great  grief. 

"But  you  do  not  love  him  now?"  he 
breathed. 

"No,  no!  All  is  over  now.  But  I 
brooded  and  brooded  and  thought — the  ex 
perience  made  me  a  woman.  Life  is  a  seri 
ous  thing  to  me  now.  I  feel  better  and 
stronger  for  what  I  have  suffered.  But  the 
memory  remains." 

"You  have  nothing  to  reproach  yourself 
with,  Lisa.  Surely  there  are  happier  memo- 


106         £f]e  Beautiful  <ttiss  Ijrookc. 

ries  in  store  for  you.      It  is  for   you   but  to 
shape  the  future." 

He  longed  for  her  impulsive  "How?" 
and  had  his  answer  ready.  It  seemed  a 
strange  thing,  but  this  confession  of  a  past 
love,  this  telling  of  a  great  sorrow  in  her 
life,  had  wrought  a  spell  upon  him.  His 
eyes  were  full  of  tears.  In  that  moment 
his  love  for  her  seemed  to  have  increased 
a  thousandfold.  The  surprise  with  which 
the  revelation  had  overwhelmed  him  was 
lost  in  the  rush  of  pity.  She  had  suffered, 
and  by  his  love  he  would  make  everything 
up  to  her. 

But  now  there  came  a  sudden  change, 
slight  in  its  outward  manifestation,  but  felt 
by  him  like  a  chill  blast,  for  his  soul  vi 
brated  to  hers,  registering  every  subtle 
shade  of  her  mood.  She  did  not  speak 
immediately,  and  he  knew  that  moment  of 
silence  was  fatal. 


©l)e  Beautiful  .JUiss  Brooke.        107 

They  had  passed  the  round  point  of  the 
Champs  Elysees,  and  the  woods  and  gar 
dens  had  ended.  Only  the  giant  hdtels 
rose  on  either  hand.  There  seemed  more 
carriages  darting  about  now,  a  greater 
movement  of  life,  a  general  sense  of  dis 
enchantment  in  the  air,  of  an  awakening 
from  a  dream  to  the  clattering  reality  of 
things.  Paul  realised  that  the  spell  was 
broken. 

Miss  Brooke  had  turned  her  head  for  a 
moment  to  look  through  the  window. 

"We  shall  be  there  in  two  or  three 
minutes  now,"  she  said,  as  a  sort  of  nat 
ural  outcome  of  her  ascertaining  their  ex 
act  whereabouts.  "I  am  afraid  I  must 
rather  have  depressed  you.  It  is  scarcely 
courteous  to  our  hostess  for  us  to  arrive 
in  so  gloomy  a  mood." 

She  gave  a  little  laugh  which  set  his 
every  nerve  a-tingle,  so  certainly  did  its 


io8        ®l)e  Beamifnl  Miss  Brooke. 

ring  lack  the  appealing  quality  that  had 
brought  him  so  close  to  her.  It  seemed 
to  thrust  him  back  abruptly  and  brutally. 

"Tell  me,  Paul,  haven't  you  ever  had 
any  love  affairs?"  she  went  on  to  ask,  and 
there  was  a  suspicion  of  banter  in  her  tone. 
"I've  told  you  all  about  my  tragedy,  now 
tell  me  about  yours  or  all  yours.  I  know 
we've  told  each  other  all  our  lives  before, 
but  of  course  we  both  bowdlerized.  The 
most  interesting  parts  have  yet  to  be 
told." 

As  she  had  asked  him  a  direct  question 
he  felt  constrained  to  answer  it.  He  found 
himself  considering  whether  his  relation  to 
Celia  need  count  as  a  love  affair,  but  he 
was  so  convinced  he  had  never  been  in 
love  with  her  at  all  that  he  decided  he 
could  leave  her  out  without  doing  violence 
to  his  conscience.  Altogether  there  had  been 
in  his  life  two  very  minor  and  foolish  amour- 


®lje  Seoutifnl  ittiss  Brook*.        109 

ettes  that  might  have  became  entangle 
ments  ;  one  with  a  barmaid  when  he  was 
in  the  lawyer's  office,  some  of  the  clerks 
having  persuaded  him  the  girl  "was  gone 
on  him,"  the  other  with  a  simple  maiden  of 
sixteen,  the  daughter  of  a  market  gardener, 
which  idyll  had  proceeded  at  his  father's 
country  seat.  Paul  told  the  latter — it  was 
a  boyish  passion  that  had  come  .te  nothing 
and  stood  for  nothing  in  his  life  ;  -the  former 
he  was  ashamed  of.  "I  proposed  -to  her 
and  gave  her  a  mortal  fright.  She  was  so 
scared  she  ran  away.  We  were  both  shame 
faced  when  we  met  again,  and  my  spurt  of 
pluck  was  at  an  end.  I  dared  not  say  an 
other  word  to  her,  and  somehow  we  drifted 
out  of  being  sweethearts.  I  was  barely  nine 
teen  at  the  time." 

Miss  Brooke  laughed  again  heartily,  but 
Paul  only  felt  the  gloomier. 

"Tell  me  some  more,  please.      You  put 

8 


no        ®lje  Jtecmtifal  ittiss  Brooke. 

me  into  quite  a  cheerful  humour.  What 
was  your  next  love  affair  ?  " 

She  had  resumed  her  old  militant  badinage. 

"There  is  nothing  more  in  my  biography 
that  is  likely  to  entertain  you,"  he  answered 
evasively. 

"Is  it  so  bad  as  that,  Paul?  I  think  you 
might  tell  me  all  the  same.  I'm  not  easily 
shocked." 

"You  mistake  me.  I  have  told  you  all," 
he  replied,  driven  to  the  lie  direct. 

"Come,  come,  Mr.  Paul.  In  a  woman 
one  might  expect  such  a  want  of  candour. 
But  suppose  I  tell  you  my  other  affairs — will 
that  encourage  you  to  tell  me  yours?  Is  it 
a  bargain  ? '' 

"Your  other  affairs?"  he  repeated. 

"Did  you  imagine  I've  had  only  one  in 
my  life  ?  That's  paying  me  a  very  poor 
compliment.  This  is  our  destination." 

"Why    do    you    tease    me,    Lisa?"    he 


JJeamifal  iHios  Srooke. 


asked,  as  they  descended.  He  was  relieved 
that  the  drive  had  come  to  an  end.  It 
had  been  a  trying  time  for  him.  He  won 
dered  what  it  was  all  coming  to  ?  Just 
when  the  critical  moment  had  come  she 
had  practically  inhibited  him  from  speaking. 
She  was  a  strange,  baffling  girl,  and  he  was 
helpless  in  her  hands. 

"I'm  not  teasing  you,  I  simply  want  to 
finish  my  confessions.  You  must  dance 
three  dances  with  me,  and  talk  to  me  a 
lot  after.  Perhaps  I  shall  succeed  in  soften 
ing  you  and  then  you'll  be  more  tractable. 
We  dance  till  midnight.  After  that  we  sup 
and  converse  till  dawn.  It  seems  there  are 
special  complications  and  permissions  for 
dancing  and  music  in  the  small  hours,  as  one's 
neighbours  above  and  below  are  apt  to  want 
to  sleep  just  then.  Dora  shirked  the  bother, 
especially  as  her  French  is  so  weak  and 
her  husband's  worse." 


ii2        ®|)e  Beautiful  illies  Brooke. 

They  went  up  the  stairway  and  were 
warmly  welcomed  by  Mrs.  McCook.  It 
was  a  pleasant  gathering  of  nice-looking 
men  and  pretty  girls,  but  Paul  was  only 
half  alive  to  it.  To  him  it  was  scarcely 
more  than  a  mere  background  for  the  fur 
ther  development  of  his  drama.  So  far  he 
took  these  further  love-affairs  of  Miss  Brooke 
as  the  purest  make-believe,  but  all  the  same 
he  was  curiously  uneasy  and  anxious  to 
hear  what  she  had  in  mind  to  tell  him. 

When  he  could  talk  to  her  again,  he 
could  discover  no  trace  in  her  manner  of 
her  having  lived  through  with  him  a  su 
preme  emotional  moment.  The  softness 
that  had  given  him  a  glimpse  of  infinite 
love,  and  which  he  had  perhaps  hoped 
might  reveal  itself  again,  was  absent ;  in  its 
place  the  old  niceness  and  the  frank  friend 
liness  of  comradeship,  and  with  them  the 
old  warning  to  him  to  stand  back.  She 


<£!)?  Beautiful  flliss  Drookc.         113 

proceeded  to  give  him  the  promised  account 
of  her  various  lovers  in  a  light,  mocking 
mood. 

"I  began  very  early,  much  earlier  than 
your  simple  country  maiden.  My  memories 
of  childhood  are  rather  hazy,  but  I  should 
say  I  must  have  had  a  lover  before  I  was 
out  of  my  cradle.  But  I  was  thirteen  be 
fore  my  heart  was  really  moved.  Since 
then  I  have  been  in  love  with  so  many 
men  that  I  really  can't  remember  half  of 
them.  However,  I'll  try  and  pick  out  those 
that  affected  me  most  seriously  at  the  time. 
The  first  one  was  really  a  very  nice  school 
boy.  His  idea  of  love-making  was  to  feed  me 
incessantly  with  candy,  which  he  did  for  a 
whole  year  till  I  fell  a  victim  to  the  charms 
of  another  boy.  The  two  fought.  Both 
emerged  from  the  combat  with  black  eyes, 
which  rather  spoilt  their  beauty,  and  there 
fore  killed  my  interest  in  them.  It  required 


H4        ®lje  JJeemlifal  Mies  Brooke. 

quite  an  heroic  effort,  though,  to  refuse 
their  offerings." 

"And  was  this  method  of  love-making 
as  satisfying  to  them  as  it  was  to  you  ? " 
asked  Paul,  beginning  to  be  confirmed  in 
his  supposition  that  Miss  Brooke  was  jok 
ing. 

"Oh,  we  used  to  have  clandestine  meet 
ings  and  we  used  to  kiss,  of  course.  That 
made  me  rather  tired  of  them.  They  wanted 
to  be  kissing  the  whole  time." 

Paul  had  a  momentary  vertigo,  though  he 
professed  by  his  manner  to  be  listening  in  the 
same  spirit  as  Miss  Brooke  narrated. 

"  The  first  one  was  always  a  nice  boy  even 
when  he  grew  up  and  was  always  ready  to 
fall  in  love  with  me  again.  But  one  fine  day 
he  got  engaged,  wrote  to  tell  me  about  it,  and 
asked  me  to  congratulate  him.  He  married. 
That  finishes  with  him. 

"The  next  interesting  one  was  a  college 


4tti0s  Brooke.        115 


man.  I  was  about  sixteen  then  and  at  the 
height  of  my  musical  ambition.  He  was 
musical,  too,  in  fact  quite  an  enthusiast.  He 
used  to  pilot  me  about  to  concerts  and  send 
me  tickets  for  the  opera.  Besides  I  was  strug 
gling  then  with  Latin,  Greek,  and  Conic  Sec 
tions,  and  he  used  to  help  me  polish  off  things 
—  for  selfish  reasons,  of  course." 

"And  used  you  to  kiss  this  time  as  well?" 
he  asked,  no  longer  questioning  that  he  was 
hearing  her  personal  history. 

"Only  at  very  sentimental  moments,"  she 
replied,  apparently  overlooking  the  mockery 
in  his  voice.  "  I  was  older  and  a  greater  ex 
pert  in  emotions.  One's  first  experiments  are 
necessarily  crude.  But,  to  proceed,  my  cava 
lier  lost  his  head  one  day  and  wanted  me  to 
marry  him  at  once,  which  was  rather  absurd. 
So  I  had  to  give  him  his  cong6  and  accept  the 
attentions  of  a  less  violent  lover.  I  had  always 
a  reserve  to  draw  upon,  but  so  long  as  a  man 


n6        ®|)e  Beautiful  Uliss  Brooke. 

behaved  nicely  and  didn't  get  altogether  un 
reasonable,  I  let  it  accumulate.  My  musical 
friend,  however,  gave  me  some  trouble.  We 
had  several  stormy  interviews,  and  at  last  I  had 
positively  to  refuse  to  see  him.  One  fine  day 
he,  too,  got  engaged  and  wrote  to  me  asking 
me  to  congratulate  him.  I  know  he  was  di 
vorced  some  time  since,  but  I've  completely 
lost  sight  of  him." 

At  this  moment  Miss  Brooke  was  led  away 
to  dance,  but  was  able  to  join  him  again  be 
fore  very  long. 

"The  next "  were  her  first  words,  in 

a  mock-solemn,  long-drawn-out  tone,  as  she 
took  his  arm  and  then  she  broke  into  laughter. 
"The  next  was  a  tall  Southerner  with  nice 
manners,  a  soft  voice,  and  a  pretty  way  of 
calling  me  'ma'am.'  He,  too,  was  musical — 
naturally,  I  preferred  musical  lovers  then.  The 
Colonel,  as  everybody  called  him,  literally 
worshipped  me,  but  he  was  as  poor  as  a 


£bc  Ocantiful  ittiss  Brooke.        117 

church  mouse,  and  I  used  to  think  myself  very 
noble  to  be  satisfied  to  get  stuck  with  him  in 
back  seats  at  concert-halls.  He  went  back 
South  after  graduating,  swearing  he'd  never 
forget  me;  but,  as  soon  as  he'd  made  his  for 
tune,  he  was  coming  back  to  marry  me.  I 
thought  that  if  the  illusion  would  help  him  to 
make  his  fortune,  he  might  as  well  keep  it. 
In  any  case  I  should  have  given  him  cause  to 
be  grateful  to  me.  He  wrote  to  me  half-a- 
dozen  times,  then  there  was  a  break  of  some 
months;  and,  when  I  had  almost  forgotten 
him,  one  fine  day  I  got  a  letter  from  him." 

"Announcing  his  engagement  and  asking 
you  to  congratulate  him,"  said  Paul,  with  bit 
terness. 

"Yes.  I  think  you  may  take  that  for 
granted.  It  is  what  they  all  do.  Is  it  any  use 
my  telling  you  more  ?  I'm  beginning  to  think 
the  recital  is  getting  monotonous.  And  then 
there  are  some  coming  along  and  I  can't  re- 


n8        ®|)e  Jteontiftti  Mies  Srookc. 


member  the  exact  order,  which  came  before 
which." 

She  seemed  to  hurry  over  her  last  words  as 
though  impatient  to  be  done,  and  wearied  and 
bored  by  the  memory  of  all  these  dallyings 
with  sentiment.  The  mocking  merriment  ap 
peared  also  to  have  died  out  of  her  face  and 
voice.  She  gazed  idly  at  the  dancers  who,  in 
the  restricted  space,  almost  constantly  brushed 
up  against  them  as  they  stood  pressed  close  to 
the  wall  Paul  wondered  if  he  were  looking 
haggard.  The  air  of  careless  merriment  he 
had  at  first  forced  himself  to  assume  had  given 
way,  as  he  listened,  to  a  sort  of  nervous 
apathy.  The  one  great  passion  of  hers  she 
had  confided  to  him  had  drawn  him  closer  to 
her  by  its  intrinsic  dignity.  It  had  appealed 
to  his  finer  nature,  stirring  it  to  its  very 
depths.  But  these  later  revelations  of  hers  re 
volted  him  by  their  very  pettiness.  What  had 
her  parents  been  at  that  such  a  girl  had  been 


Seantifttl  ittiss  JBrooke.        119 


allowed  to  run  wild  in  that  fashion  ?  It  was 
monstrous  she  had  not  been  supervised  and 
prevented  from  stooping  to  these  foolish  and 
frivolous  relations  with  foolish  and  frivolous 
men  —  men  she  had  allowed  to  kiss  her  lips! 

The  pang  that  tore  him  at  the  image  re 
vealed  to  him  how  powerless  he  was.  He 
glanced  at  her  again  as  she  stood  at  his  side. 
There  was  a  half-sad  expression  now  on  her 
face,  which  had  resumed  all  its  babyishness 
again.  The  lock  of  hair  near  her  ear  lay  about 
in  a  dainty  twist.  Her  lips  showed  innocent 
and  red.  To  kiss  them  he  would  lay  down 
his  life! 

He  was  shaken  ;  he  wanted  to  sob  aloud. 
But  he  was  at  a  festive  gathering.  Round, 
round,  up  and  down  the  room  went  the 
dancers,  shuffling  forward  with  their  rapid 
glide,  the  men  bending  their  long,  supple 
bodies,  the  flowing  curves  of  the  women's 
dresses  imparting  a  greater  grace  to  the  move- 


120        (Tlic  Dcantifnl  IVliso  Brooke. 

ment.     The  whole  scene  was  dreamy  to  him. 
His  inner  thought  was  the  only  reality. 

Why  had  she  told  him,  why  had  she  told 
him  ?  he  moaned  within  himself.  Then  as  he 
saw  a  new  softness  appear  in  her  face,  a 
gleam  of  comfort  came  to  him.  Perhaps  it 
had  been  from  motives  of  conscience  and  she 
really  repented  all;  perhaps,  too,  she  had 
thought  it  right  to  tell  him  everything  before 
allowing  him  to  ask  her  to  be  his. 

He  would  overlook  all  those  episodes  if 
only  she  would  be  his.  If  even  they  had  been 
more  serious,  if  even  she  had  been  a  dishon 
oured  woman,  he  knew  now  he  would  have 
had  no  strength  not  to  condone.  If  any  one 
had  told  him  a  year  ago  that  he — Paul — would 
one  day  be  both  willing  and  eager  to  make 
such  concessions  as  regards  the  past  of  a 
woman  he  contemplated  making  his  wife,  he 
would  have  denied  the  statement  indignantly 
as  a  libel  on  himself. 


®l)e  Beautiful  itliss  Brooke.        121 

She  turned  suddenly,  and  their  looks  met. 
Her  face  lighted  up  with  a  smile.  "Come, 
Paul,  it's  your  turn  now?" 

"My  turn!"  he  echoed,  her  words  for 
the  moment  startlingly  sounding  like  an  in 
vitation  to  take  his  place  in  the  procession  of 
her  lovers. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "Who  was  your 
sweetheart  after  the  gardener's  daughter?" 

He  denied  any  further  love,  though  hating 
to  tell  the  lie.  But  Miss  Brooke  persisted, 
entreating,  provoking,  urging,  coaxing,  pout 
ing;  subtly  transforming  herself  into  the 
child  with  its  lovable  moods  and  move 
ments;  enslaving  him,  rendering  him  pow 
erless  at  her  will,  with  this  one  strange 
exception — he  could  be  strong  enough  to 
withhold  from  her  the  episode  he  was 
ashamed  of. 

"Paul,  Paul,"  she  said  sternly.  "Tell 
the  truth.  Are  you  not  in  love  now?" 


122        £l]e  ijeantifnl  -ftliss  Brooke. 

He  scarcely  dared  look  at  her.  He  was 
conscious  of  that  lock  again  and  of  another 
on  her  forehead. 

"Silence  betrays.  Did  you  come  to  Paris 
for  the  sake  of  your  architecture  or  to  be 
near  me?" 

"To  be  near  you,  Lisa,"  he  breathed. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

ALTHOUGH  the  thought  of  Lisa's  old  flirta 
tions  obtruded  and  pricked  occasionally,  Paul 
went  about  the  next  morning  in  a  state  of 
subdued  happiness.  A  wonderful  calm  had 
come  over  him,  disturbed  only  at  the  mo 
ments  when  he  had  to  thrust  from  him  those 
images  of  other  men  kissing  Lisa's  lips. 
Those  meaningless  loves  had  been  long  dead, 
he  argued,  and,  since  she  had  made  the  con 
fession  voluntarily  at  the  risk  of  estranging 
his  love,  it  would  be  unfair  to  her  for  him 
to  dwell  upon  them  now. 

At  the  same  time  he  could  never  have 
conceived  the  possibility  of  such  a  line  of 
argument  on  his  part  in  the  days  before  he 

123 


124        ©fje  Secmtifal  /Hiss  Brooke. 

had  met  Miss  Brooke.  Love  had,  indeed, 
set  at  naught  all  the  principles  he  had  thought 
to  abide  by — had  made  him  yield  his  demand 
for  that  absolute  soul-virginity  he  had  deemed 
the  very  basis  of  his  choice. 

But  away  with  all  that  now!  Her  love 
for  him  was,  of  a  surety,  the  first  that  had 
come  into  her  life  since  her  great  sorrow. 
As  for  Pemberton,  there  had  never  been  the 
slightest  sentiment  between  her  and  him. 
No  doubt  the  fellow  would  now  take  a  suit 
able  place  in  the  background  of  their  life,  and 
they  would  welcome  him  as  an  acquaintance. 
Why  should  he  bear  the  man  animosity  ? 

He  could  not  do  any  work  that  morning, 
but  strolled  hither  and  thither,  getting  joyous 
impressions  from  the  sun-lit  city.  Lisa  had 
not  only  promised  to  dine  in  the  evening  at 
the  Cafe  Pousset  and  afterwards  to  go  with 
him  to  see  a  melodrama  at  the  Ambigu, 
most  of  the  other  theatres  having  closed  their 


Ueautifal  ilti00  Brooke.        125 


doors,  but  she  had  given  him  permission  to 
take  his  holiday  at  Perros-Guirec  during  the 
whole  two  months  of  her  stay  there,  so  that  he 
would  be  virtually  one  of  the  party.  The 
immediate  outlook  was,  therefore,  very  agree 
able. 

He  returned  to  the  maison  meubtte  where 
his  quarters  were,  immediately  after  his  mid 
day  meal,  and  passed  the  afternoon  packing 
away  his  luggage,  which  occupation  gave 
him  the  pleasurable  feeling  that  his  prepara 
tions  for  the  happy  time  to  come  were  in 
full  swing.  He  sang  and  whistled  as  he 
worked,  his  overflowing  vigour  manifesting 
itself  in  the  bold  ornamental  letters  with 
which  he  made  out  the  labels  for  his  trunks  : 
"  Middleton,  Paris  a  Perros-Guirec."  At 
half-past  five  he  began  to  think  of  taking 
a  stroll  before  dinner,  and  was  on  the 
point  of  doing  so  when  the  concierge 
brought  him  up  a  letter  with  the  charac- 


i26        (Elje  Jteautifal  41U0S  Brooke. 


teristic  explanation  that  it  had  come  in  the 
morning,  shortly  after  monsieur  had  gone  out, 
and  that  he  had  forgotten  about  it  as  mon 
sieur  passed  by  before. 

Paul  recognised  his  mother's  writing,  and 
stayed  to  read  it.  At  first  it  did  not  seem 
to  contain  anything  of  special  importance, 
covering  much  the  same  ground  as  many  of 
its  predecessors,  and  dealing  with  one  or 
two  business  matters.  On  the  third  page 
came  a  reproach  that  he  had  allowed  three 
weeks  go  by  without  writing. 

"I  can  understand,"  continued  his  mother, 
"that  all  those  hours  of  engrossing  work 
every  day  must  leave  you  quite  fatigued,  my 
poor  child.  But  surely  I  am  very  reasonable 
in  my  demands,  and  one  letter  a  week  is 
not  such  a  very  heavy  tax  on  you.  Are  you 
sure  you  are  not  overworking  yourself,  dear 
Paul  ?  You  were  always  a  delicate  child. 
and  you  are  certainly  not  strong  enough  to 


®l)e  Beautiful  ,#1100  Brooke.        127 

go  on  living  in  a  French  hotel,  with  only 
strangers  to  look  after  you.  Don't  you  think 
you  ought  to  take  a  long  holiday  now?  I 
am  going  to  take  Celia  to  Dieppe — it  has 
all  been  decided  and  arranged  to-day.  The 
poor  child  has  been  worried  and  fretting 
and  poorly  for  a  long  time  past,  and  sadly 
needs  this  entire  change  of  scene.  Now 
suppose,  dear  Paul,  you  come  and  join  us  at 
Dieppe.  You  will  be  near  to  me,  and  I 
can  look  after  you  again,  if  only  for  a 
couple  of  months.  We  shall  be  starting 
the  day  after  to-morrow,  and  we  shall  be 
staying  at  the  Hotel  de  Paris.  Write  to 
me,  dear  Paul,  direct  there,  or,  better  still, 
come  down  and  surprise  us.  Celia,  I  am 
sure,  will  be  delighted  to  see  you.  I  never 
understood  what  happened  between  you 
two  exactly.  You  said  'good-bye'  so  stiffly 
that  I  made  sure  you  had  quarrelled,  though 
Celia  assures  me  that  was  not  so.  She  is  a 


1 28        ®|)e  Beautiful  JJliss  Brook*. 

dear,  good  girl,  and  I  love  her  as  if  she 
were  my  own  daughter." 

Of  course  he  couldn't  go.  What  a  bother 
to  have  to  refuse  !  Why  had  they  just  fixed 
on  Dieppe  when  they  might  have  gone  to 
Norway  or  taken  a  jaunt  up  to  Scotland  ! 
And  then,  too,  confound  it!  they  might  even 
make  a  descent  upon  him  at  Perros-Guirec, 
for  he  would  have  to  tell  his  mother  that 
was  the  place  where  he  had  already  ar 
ranged  to  spend  his  holiday  with  friends. 
He  must  discuss  the  matter  with  Lisa  be 
fore  replying  to  her  or  telling  her  of  his 
intended  marriage. 

But  he  had  scarcely  time  to  digest  the 
letter  before  the  man  brought  him  up  an 
other  which  the  postman  had  just  left.  This 
time  the  writing  was  Lisa's.  What  could 
she  have  to  write  to  him  about  if  it  were 
not  to  postpone  the  evening's  engagement? 
His  nervous  fingers  tore  at  the  envelope. 


Scautifnl  Miss  Brooke.        129 


"DEAR  PAUL.  —  Please  don't  come  for  me 
this  evening,  and,  indeed,  you  must  never 
come  for  me  again.  In  writing  this  I  am 
acting  the  part  of  a  very  good  friend  to 
you,  and  it  is  as  a  very  good  friend  I 
should  like  you  to  remember  me,  as  I  shall 
always  remember  you.  —  Yours  sincerely, 
"ELIZABETH  BROOKE." 

So  all  was  over  !  Behind  the  simplicity 
of  the  words  he  perceived  a  terrible  inex- 
orableness.  If  only  she  had  signed  "Lisa," 
it  would  not  have  crushed  him  so  much  ; 
but  the  "Elizabeth  Brooke"  was  paraly 
zing. 

When  his  hand  was  steady  enough,  he 
wrote  :  — 

"DEAR  LISA:  —  Need  I  say  your  note  has 
quite  stunned  me?  Won't  you  give  me  a 
word  of  explanation  ?  PAUL." 


130        Stye  Beautiful  ifliss  Srooke. 

The  concierge's  boy  delivered  this  at  Miss 
Brooke's  pension. 

He  scarcely  knew  how  he  got  through 
the  night.  Every  now  and  again  he  woke 
up  and  tossed  about  ;  and  when  he  did 
lose  consciousness,  he  had  a  sense  of  a 
grey  infinity  in  which  there  was  a  great 
chasm.  He  wanted  to  rush  to  it  to  close  it  up, 
but  was  held  back  by  some  strange  power. 

The  morning's  post  brought  him  Miss 
Brooke's  reply. 

"DEAR  PAUL. — I  am  glad  your  letter  is 
so  sensible  and  to  the  point.  Of  course  I 
owe  you  an  explanation,  but  I  want  you 
not  to  insist  on  it,  because  I  fear  it  will 
hurt  you  too  much.  The  pain  it  would 
give  me  I  deserve. — Yours,  LISA." 

He  found  this  note  infinitely  softer  than 
the  first  and  was  encouraged  to  write  again. 


®l)e  Beautiful  iUioo  Brooke.        131 

"DEAR  LISA. — I  am  not  strong  enough  to 
face  the  punishment  unless  I  know  my  sin. 
The  pain  of  listening  to  you  can  be  nothing 
to  the  pain  of  this  horrible  gap  in  my 
mind.  Won't  you  let  me  see  you — for  the 
last  time  ?  Remember  it  is  only  a  day 
since  you  told  me  you  loved  me.  Don't 
refuse.  PAUL." 

To  which  came  the  reply  by  his  own 
messenger. 

"  DEAR  PAUL. — Come  this  evening  at  eight 
and  you  will  find  me  alone. — Yours, 

"LISA." 

All  day  long  he  nerved  himself  for  the 
interview.  He  would  rehearse  nothing,  an 
ticipate  nothing.  When  the  time  came,  he 
would  speak  straight  from  his  heart.  Per 
haps  he  might  yet  move  her. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Miss  BROOKE  received  him  with  the  same 
cheery  frankness  as  of  yore,  gave  him  a 
quick  hand-shake,  and  installed  him  in  his 
old  place  on  the  knobby-springed  ottoman 
beneath  the  hanging  book-shelves.  The 
little  table  was  laid,  as  usual,  for  after- 
dinner  coffee,  and  the  small  copper  kettle 
was  boiling  over  a  spirit-lamp.  She  was 
the  first  to  speak. 

"You  were  right,  Paul.  I  have  been 
thinking  a  good  deal,  and  I  have  come  to 
agree  with  you  that  we  ought  to  have  a 
last  talk  together.  I  am  sensible  that  I  am 
a  thoroughly  unscrupulous  person  —  please 
don't  contradict  me,  I  mean  it  in  sober 

138 


£t)e  Dcantifnl  fflies  Drookt.        133 

earnest — but  I  am  not  without  my  redeem 
ing  moments,  and  so  it  happens  I  feel  I 
ought  to  make  my  apology  to  you  before 
we  part.  Apology  !  That  is  a  very  weak 
word  to  use  after  my  immoral  behaviour 
towards  you.  I  mean  to  talk  to  you  very 
openly,  in  fact,  I  am  going  to  confess  the 
whole  extent  of  my  misconduct.  Only  I 
want  you  to  believe  that  to  do  so  will 
hurt  me  if  possible  even  more  than  you. 
I  really  do  want  your  sympathy  very 
badly,  Paul,  although  I  know  I  don't  de 
serve  it." 

Her  beautiful  face  was  grave,  and  her 
voice  a  shade  anxious.  In  her  eyes  was 
an  expression  of  sincerity  that  compelled 
acceptance. 

"1  know  you  will  make  me  understand 
everything,  Lisa,"  he  said. 

"You  must  withhold  your  judgment  till 
I  have  finished.  I  am  going  to  be  absolutely 


134        ®l)e  Beautiful  iJliss  Brooke. 

candid,  though  I  am  not  sure  whether  I 
have  ever  succeeded  in  telling  the  truth 
about  things,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing 
but  the  truth,  even  to  myself.  One  shrinks 
from  laying  bare  the  causes  and  motives 
of  one's  thoughts  and  conduct,  even  when 
no  other  eye  is  looking.  But  I  should  feel 
myself  quite  vile  now  if  I  concealed  the  least 
thing  from  you." 

"  One  can  over-accentuate  the  baseness 
of  one's  motives  as  well  as  cover  it  up," 
he  suggested. 

"It  is  very  kind  of  you,  Paul,  to  try  and 
spare  me.  But  please  save  up  your  mercy  ; 
I  warn  you  I  shall  be  sadly  in  need  of  it 
later  on.  To  come  to  facts  now,  Paul,  I 
have  tried  to  victimise  you  from  the  be 
ginning.  I  have  dissembled  and  told  you 
lies  throughout.  I  have  systematically  acted 
a  part.  I  have  never  loved  you." 

He  tried   to  make  some  articulation,   but 


®I)£  Seautifol  ifliae  Srooke.        135 

not  a  muscle  moved.      He  sat  as  if  turned 
to  stone. 

"  That  first  evening  we  met  I  knew  I 
had  turned  your  head,  and  I  could  see  at 
once  you  were  inexperienced  with  women 
as  surely  as  if  the  fact  had  been  branded 
upon  you.  I  had  heard  somebody  point 
you  out  and  say  you  were  worth  fifteen 
thousand  pounds  a  year,  and,  as  afterwards 
you  yourself  told  me  you  were  rich,  any 
doubt  I  might  have  had  on  the  point  was 
removed.  My  own  poverty  had  just  been 
painfully  brought  home  to  me,  for  I  had 
been  forced  to  leave  Paris  for  want  of 
money  at  the  very  moment  my  ambition 
began  to  look  reasonable.  I  was  feeling 
particularly  bitter  about  it  as  there  was  no 
certainty  at  all  of  my  being  able  to  come 
back  here.  Poppa's  savings  had  all  gone 
in  starting  me  with  a  good  stock  of  dresses 
and  keeping  me  here  two  years.  He  had 


136        ffilje  Beautiful  UU0s  Srooke. 

hoped  to  be  able  to  do  more  for  me,  but 
he  could  only  send  me  my  passage-money. 
Fifteen  or  even  ten  thousand  pounds  a  year 
is  a  great  temptation  to  a  poor  girl.  Chance 
had  never  yet  thrown  in  my  way  a  really 
rich  suitor,  and  there  was  I,  at  the  moment 
of  meeting  him,  almost  on  the  eve  of  de 
parture,  with  very  little  money  in  my  pocket 
and  indebted  to  the  kindness  of  a  lady  for 
her  invitation  to  stay  the  month  in  London. 
She  had  taken  my  room  for  me  as  she  could 
not  accommodate  me  at  her  own  house. 
You  see  how  poor  I  was  !  I  set  myself 
puzzling  in  the  coolest  possible  way  as  to 
how  I  could  get  you.  Instinct  as  well  as 
the  ease  with  which  I  had  bewitched  you 
told  me  there  were  romantic  possibilities  in 
/you,  of  which  you  had  scarcely  any  sus 
picion  and  which  might  easily  be  played 
upon.  And  a  plan  formed  at  once  in  my 
mind  in  the  ultimate  success  of  which  I 


®l)£  Jkantifal  iflies  Brooke.        137 

had  the  fullest  confidence.  To  put  the  idea 
into  your  head  that  we  meet  again  here  in 
a  year's  time  was  to  appeal  to  your  romantic 
side.  That  is  why  I  mentioned  the  Beaux 
Arts  to  you — your  love  for  architecture  made 
my  game  easy.  I  was  now  determined  that 
nothing  should  stand  in  the  way  of  my  re 
turning  to  Paris,  that  poppa  somehow  must 
raise  the  necessary  money — even  if  he  ran 
into  debt.  Happily  he  was  able  to  send  me 
back  and  to  see  his  way  clear  to  keep  me 
going  as  long  as  I  chose  to  stay." 

Miss  Brooke  paused  a  moment  and  poured 
out  Paul's  coffee,  which,  however,  he  let  stand 
untouched. 

"Everything  turned  out  just  as  I  had  cal 
culated,"  she  continued,  after  taking  a  sip  at 
her  own.  "  You  had  carried  me  in  your  mind 
the  whole  time,  and  you  had  been  waiting  for 
me  and  counting  on  my  coming.  So  far  I 
was  delighted.  For  a  time  all  went  smoothly. 


138        STIje  Seamifal  ittiss  Crooke. 

You  were  mine  completely.  But  then  an  un 
foreseen  force  began  suddenly  to  act  on  the  posi 
tion.  My  old  enthusiasm  for  my  work  came 
back,  and  with  it  my  old  mad  ambitions.  Do 
you  know  what  first  gave  me  those  mad  ambi 
tions  ?  You  shall  hear  in  a  moment.  Any 
way,  my  old  intolerance  against  anything  like 
dependence  rose  up  in  me.  I  wanted  to  make 
a  great  name  and  a  great  deal  of  money,  all  by 
myself.  A  picture  by  a  great  master — we  ad 
mired  it  together  at  the  salon — had  just  sold 
for  thirty  thousand  dollars,  and  that  inflamed 
me.  No  woman  painter  has  yet  existed  of 
absolutely  the  first  rank;  one  and  all  have 
been  influenced,  more  or  less,  by  a  man.  I 
wanted  to  be  the  first  woman  whose  work 
should  be  absolutely  great,  absolutely  original. 
I  wanted  the  honour  for  America,  for  I  am 
proud  of  being  an  American  woman.  But  you 
were  on  the  spot,  and  I  had  only  to  moVe  my 
little  finger  to  get  you.  You  were  an  eternal 


®l)e  Beautiful  ifliss  Brooke.        139 

temptation.  Don't  you  think  I  knew  you 
were  jealous  of  Charlie  ?  He  has  been  in  love 
with  me  ever  since  I  first  came  here;  but, 
poor  devil,  he  only  just  manages  to  get  along, 
and  is  only  too  glad  if  he's  not  behindhand 
with  his  studio  rent.  The  reason  1  allowed 
him  to  hang  round  so  much  was  partly  be 
cause  he  had  become  a  habit  of  mine,  and 
partly  to  help  me  not  to  be  tempted  to  give 
you  too  much  of  my  company. 

"I  really  wanted  to  fight  against  the 
temptation  of  your  money,  but  more  for  my 
own  sake  than  yours.  In  the  first  place  I  did 
not  love  you.  And  in  the  second,  I  could 
read  your  nature  like  a  book.  Your  ideas  and 
mine  would  never  go  together.  I  wanted  a 
husband  who  would  be  content  with  such 
moments  of  love  as  I  could  spare  him  out  of 
my  career ;  to  whom  I  could  go  for  love  when 
I  wanted  love;  who  would  be  content  to  live 
out  his  own  life  and  leave  me  to  work  out 


140        £lic  Beautiful  Bliss  Brooke. 

mine.  I  do  not  want  to  be  kept  by  my  hus 
band — rather  than  that  I  should  prefer  to  keep 
him.  All  my  rooted  independence  had  sprung 
up  as  by  magic  the  moment  I  took  up  my 
brush  and  palette  again  and  looked  at  the 
model.  Your  notions  were  far  too  primitive 
for  me.  You  would  have  allowed  me  to  go 
on  with  my  art  as  a  concession — to  do  credit 
to  your  name,  perhaps.  You  would  have 
looked  upon  my  pictures  as  sacred,  to  be 
hung  in  your  house  and  worshipped  by  you 
before  your  guests;  I  should  have  wanted  to 
sell  them,  to  convert  them  into  dollars. 

"Do  you  wonder  now  I  was  strong 
enough  to  hesitate  ?  I  was  only  too  glad 
when  Dora  said  she  was  going  to  carry  me  off 
to  Perros-Guirec.  It  would  take  me  away 
from  you  and — temptation.  Then  you  sent 
me  those  flowers.  I  was  touched.  Not  by 
the  flowers,  but  by  the  train  of  thought  they 
set  going.  The  ghost  of  my  conscience  came 


fftlje  Seanlifnl  Ulies  Brooke.        141 

up,  suggesting  I  should  be  treating  you  badly, 
seeing  'you  had  'em  so  bad.'  And  then  you 
had,  say,  ten  thousand  pounds  a  year!  That, 
I  suppose,  had  something  to  do  with  the  rising 
of  the  phantom.  So  I  determined  to  take  you 
to  Dora's — of  course,  she  replied  at  once  she 
would  be  pleased  to  welcome  you — and  I 
made  up  my  mind,  half  to  amuse  myself,  that 
I  would  make  you  propose  in  the  cab  on  the 
way  to  her.  I  could  read  you  through  and 
through,  and  knew  your  every  thought.  So 
far  1  had  kept  you  at  a  perceptible  distance, 
now  it  pleased  me  to  draw  you  close  to  me, 
and  to  see  you  obey  without  my  uttering  a 
single  word  of  command.  I  told  you  about 
my  old  engagement  just  then  because  it  gave 
me  a  sensation  of  daring.  I  calculated  on  stir 
ring  the  romance  and  chivalry  in  you  still 
more  deeply.  The  experiment  was  risky — 
but  it  succeeded.  You  responded  like  a  good 

ship  to  its  helm.     Then   for  the   first   time 
10 


142         £lK  beautiful  .fHiss  Drookc. 

since  I  had  known  you,  Paul,  I  suffered  re 
morse — real  remorse.  Why  it  came  just 
then  I  have  never  been  able  to  make  out, 
but  all  of  a  sudden  I  was  dreadfully  sorry 
for  you. 

"I  saw  clearly  that  even  if  I  had  loved 
you,  our  lives  could  never  harmonise;  that 
after  the  first  honeymoon  cooings,  the  conflict 
of  wills  and  ideas  would  inevitably  set  in,  and 
we  should  both  be  utterly  and  hopelessly  mis 
erable.  But  I  did  not  love  you,  and  I  felt  my 
self  in  a  terrible  dilemma.  You  were  on  the 
point  of  speaking,  and  the  only  thing  I  could 
think  of  to  stop  you,  and  to  stop  you  for 
always,  was  to  tell  you  my  early  flirtations. 
I  was  hoping  to  play  on  your  prejudices  and 
set  you  against  me.  I  was  true  to  myself  then ; 
I  was  throwing  away — how  many  thousands 
a  year? 

"  But  I  caused  you  suffering  to  no  purpose, 
and,  as  I  realised  nothing  would  make  you 


£!K  ikantifnl  ittiss  jBrooke.        143 

desist,  the  temptation  of  all  those  thousands 
came  upon  me  again.  I  argued  I  was 
the  stronger  personality  of  the  two,  and  I 
should  be  able  to  manage  you — easily.  Curi 
ous  how  I  accentuated  the  'easily,'  and 
twisted  my  arguments  to  suit  it.  There  was 
little  to  do — I  just  pulled  the  wire  and  the 
puppet  worked.  You'll  forgive  me  for  calling 
you  a  puppet,  Paul,  but  you  were  one,  you 
know. 

"Perhaps  now  you  will  begin  to  under 
stand  how  I  felt  the  next  morning.  I  really 
liked  you,  Paul,  and  I  had  done  you  so  great  a 
wrong  from  the  very  moment  of  our  first 
meeting.  I  had  not  cried  for  more  than  three 
years,  Paul,  but  I  cried  then.  The  situation 
was  desperate,  and  there  was  nothing  for  it 
but  to  apply  a  desperate  remedy. 

"I  have  not  told  you  all.  I  have  purposely 
kept  back  something  to  the  end.  If  I  had 
mingled  it  with  the  rest  it  would  have  been 


144        ®l)e  Seontiful  ittiss  Brooke. 

lost,  and  as  it  is  my  only  claim  on  your  sym 
pathy,  I  have  kept  it  for  use  by  itself.  It  is 
unfortunate  that  even  here  I  have  to  begin 
with  the  confession  of  another  lie,  but  I  have 
already  confessed  to  so  many,  I  am  hoping 
that  one  more  won't  make  me  sink  any  lower 
in  your  estimation.  Besides,  my  motive  in 
telling  it  was  good.  I  refer  to  my  old  engage 
ment.  The  fact  was  true,  but  the  details  I 
gave  you  were  false.  I  had  intended  telling 
you  the  truth,  but  somehow  it  stuck  on  my 
lips.  I  felt  I  ought  never  to  have  used  so 
sacred  an  experience  for  such  a  purpose.  I 
had  to  invent  a  lie  as  I  went  on.  But  I  cut  it 
as  short  as  I  could. 

"I  did  love  the  man  as,  it  seemed  to  me, 
no  woman  could  have  loved  a  man  before. 
He  was  almost  penniless,  but  I  did  not  mind 
that.  I  would  have  married  him,  and  he 
would  not  have  interfered  with  my  ambitions. 
He  would  have  been  content  to  have  me  live 


QTI)e  Beautiful  ifliss  Brooke.        145 

away  from  him  whilst  I  worked  according  to 
my  own  spirit,  and  developed  the  gifts  he  was 
the  first  to  discover  in  me.  For  he  was  a 
painter,  too;  had  starved  to  get  a  training  in 
Europe,  had  starved  while  getting  it.  To  help 
us  get  a  start  I  was  content  at  first  to  absorb 
myself  in  his  work.  That  was  a  fatal  mistake. 
I  can  scarcely  trace  out  how  it  came  about — 
and  to  linger  on  it  makes  me  suffer  terribly — 
but  with  the  lapse  of  time  I  ceased  to  exist  for 
him  as  a  creature  of  flesh  and  blood.  I  sud 
denly  realised  that  I  had  become  a  mere  in 
spiration  to  him — it  was  only  the  artist  in  me 
he  worshipped.  All  his  heart  and  soul  went 
into  his  work — he  was  no  longer  a  man,  but  a 
mere  mind  wielding  a  brush.  I  can  see  him 
how  absorbed  before  his  canvas,  tall  and  thin 
with  his  scholar's  stoop — for  Nesbit  was  a 
scholar!  But  it  had  to  end  at  last.  I  cried 
bitterly  for  many  a  night  after.  I  had  a  letter 
from  him  one  fine  day " 


146        (Tljc  Ucantiful  HU0s  Crookc. 

"Announcing  his  engagement  and  asking 
you  to  congratulate  him  ?  "  broke  from  Paul's 
lips.  His  eyes  were  too  dry  for  tears. 

"  It  is  the  only  letter  of  his  I  haven't  burnt. 
He  is  famous  now,  but  the  first  picture  he 
ever  sold  went  to  buy  my  turquoise  necklace 
to  match  the  comb  I  had  from  my  mother. 
His  example  was  a  noble  one — the  first  pic 
ture  I  am  offered  money  for  shall  go  to  poppa 
instead.  But  he  would  never  take  the  gift 
back,  and  now  I  value  it  as  his.  It  has  al 
ways  given  me  great  joy  to  wear  it — in  fact, 
that  is  my  one  great  joy  apart  from  my 
work." 

"  You  still  love  him  !  You  have  loved 
him  all  through  ! "  cried  Paul. 

Her  face  softened.  "  You  see  I  have  quite 
an  extraordinary  vein  of  sentiment  in  me. 
I  am  not  sure  whether  I  am  not  ashamed 
of  it." 

"Tell   me,   Lisa — if  I   may  still   call  you 


Secmtifnl  ittiss  Brooke.        147 


Lisa  —  all  those  flirtations  you  told  me  about 
were  true  ?  " 

"What  a  quaint  question  !  You  haven't 
drunk  your  coffee."  He  gulped  down  the 
cold  contents  of  the  tiny  cup  at  one  draught, 
for  his  mouth  was  parched. 

"They  all  happened  just  as  I  told  you, 
and  I  haven't  told  you  a  quarter." 

"And  do  you  mind  my  asking  you  an 
other  quaint  question  ?  Have  you  and  Charlie 
ever  kissed?" 

"  I  have  always  liked  to  have  nice  men 
kiss  me.  It  is  a  mania  with  me,  and  I 
shall  go  on  doing  so  till  the  end  of  the 
chapter." 

"All  the  same,  Lisa,  I  love  you  still.  Is 
there  no  hope  for  me?  I  have  no  preju 
dices.  I  want  you,  Lisa,  just  as  you  are. 
Your  life  shall  be  perfectly  free  —  your  ca 
reer  your  own." 

"You  are  good,   Paul,  and  I  have  played 


148       (El)*  Ikcmtifttl  ittiss  Brooke. 

with  you  precisely  as  a  cat  plays  with  a 
mouse.  You  will  have  observed  I  have  a 
good  deal  of  the  cat  in  me.  Believe  me, 
I  am  in  earnest  when  I  say  I  am  quite 
unworthy  of  your  love " 

"No,  Lisa,"  he  began. 

"Listen,  Paul.  I  want  you  to  understand 
how  much  I  love  my  lost  darling.  If  he 
were  to  leave  his  wife  and  child,  now  and 
come  to  me  and  say  he  loved  me,  I  would 
go  with  him  to  the  end  of  the  earth.  No, 
no,  Paul.  My  hope  is  only  in  my  work. 
I  know  I  shall  realise  my  ambition.  Some 
day  you  will  marry  a  better  woman  than 
I  am.  And  if,"  she  continued,  with  a 
smile,  "you  care  to  write  and  let  me 
know,  be  sure  I  shall  congratulate  you 
right  heartily.  Now  tell  me  I  have  your 
sympathy,  and  then  let  us  say  good 
bye." 

"I  love  you,  Lisa.     Is  that  not  sufficient 


Ucautiful  ifliss  Brooke.        149 


proof  of  my  sympathy  ?  I  shall  leave  Paris 
to-night." 

"Come,  Paul,  kiss  me!  For  the  first 
time  and  last  !  " 

He  brushed  her  lips  so  lightly  that  he 
scarce  had  the  consciousness  of  doing  so  ; 
then  he  staggered  from  the  room. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

HE  wandered  he  knew  not  whither,  pene 
trating  into  strange,  silent  regions  his  foot 
had  never  trod.  At  the  end  of  an  hour 
he  found  he  had  taken  a  long  circuit 
round,  and  that  he  had  arrived  again  at 
the  hotel  where  Lisa  lived.  He  crossed  the 
narrow  street,  and,  standing  in  the  shadow, 
looked  up  at  the  window  he  knew  so  well. 
It  stood  wide  open,  and  he  could  see  the 
white  ceiling  of  the  lighted  room,  with  the 
huge  Japanese  umbrella  making  a  glare  of 
colour  against  it.  In  the  balcony  sat  two 
figures  full  in  the  light  that  flooded  out. 
One  was  Miss  Brooke,  the  other  a  stalwart 
young  man  in  a  Norfolk  suit  he  could  not 

150 


QTI)e  Seanlifnl  ittiss  Srooke.        151 

recollect  having  seen  before.  A  vague  sound 
of  their  cheerful  talking  came  down  to  him. 

He  turned  away  with  a  sigh,  and  strode 
rapidly  to  his  lodging.  He  lighted  his  lamp, 
and,  sinking  into  a  chair,  sat  looking  at  his 
trunks.  The  labels  with  their  bold  orna 
mental  lettering — "  Middleton,  Paris  a  Per- 
ros-Guirec " — stared  him  mockingly  in  the 
face.  He  averted  his  eyes,  instinctively 
seeking  in  his  pocket  for  his  mother's  let 
ter,  which  he  had  till  now  forgotten,  and 
was  surprised  to  find  it  rolled  into  a  ball. 
Smoothing  it  out,  he  read  it  through 
again. 

"Write  to  me,  dear  Paul,  direct  there, 
or,  better  still,  come  down  and  surprise  us. 
Celia,  I  am  sure,  will  be  delighted  to  see 
you.  I  never  understood  what  happened 
between  you  two  exactly.  You  said  '  good 
bye  '  so  stiffly  that  I  made  sure  you  had 
quarrelled,  though  Celia  assures  me  that  it 


i52        ®l)c  Beantifal  ittioG  Brooke. 

was  not  so.  She  is  a  dear,  good  girl, 
and  I  love  her  as  if  she  were  my  own 
daughter." 

And  with  these  words  he  seemed  to  read 
the  inevitableness  of  his  fate.  His  rebellion 
against  it  was  over.  He  had  broken  loose 
from  the  maternal  leading-strings,  but  had 
made  a  miserable  failure  without  them. 
Now  he  would  help  to  fix  them  on  him 
again. 

The  millionaire's  daughter,  the  keynote  of 
whose  character  had  struck  him  as  a  charm 
ing,  simple  frankness,  and  in  pursuit  of 
whom  he  had  set  out,  had  proved  to  be 
a  more  complex  specimen  of  womanhood 
than  he  could  have  imagined  to  exist,  the 
very  essence  of  that  femininity  of  which 
he  had  always  had  an  instinctive  distrust. 
Celia  was  not  brilliant,  but  she  was  safe — 
he  knew  her  well  enough  to  be  sure  of 
that. 


®l]e  JJeatUifal  ittiss  Srooke.        153 

He  seized  a  small  brush  and  inked  over 
the  flamboyant  "  Perros-Guirec,"  writing 
over  the  black  strip  the  word  "Dieppe" 
in  the  plainest  of  lettering.  Then,  finishing 
what  little  packing  there  remained  to  be 
done,  he  went  out  to  consult  a  time-table 
at  a  neighbouring  cafe,  where  he  wrote 
and  posted  a  note  to  his  professor,  and 
another  to  the  massier  of  his  class.  He 
next  hailed  a  cab  at  the  rank,  and  the 
concierge  carried  down  his  trunks.  "A  la 
gare  St.  La^are!" 

The  cocker  cracked  his  whip,  and  Paul, 
lost  in  thought,  was  only  vaguely  conscious 
of  the  streets  and  boulevards  that  had  be 
come  so  dear  to  him. 


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DATE  DUE 


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GAYLORD 


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